Joanna Schwartz on Qualified Immunity

In this episode, Joanna Schwartz, Vice Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, discusses her article, "The Case Against Qualified Immunity," which was published in the Notre Dame Law Review. Schwartz begins by sketching a historical timeline of the idea of qualified immunity doctrine, from common law understandings of "good faith" extant in 1871 on the doctrine's introduction in Pierson v. Ray (1967) to further developments in the doctrine that has strayed from common law moorings toward a conception centered in the Supreme Court's policy ends. She explains that qualified immunity doctrine largely fails to complete its own policy ends, drawing from qualitative and quantitative research she conducted on law enforcement agencies and attorneys bringing constitutional civil rights litigation before federal courts, finding that qualified immunity doctrine's stated justifications fail to match real-world conditions. She details what circuit courts can do to better shape the ambiguous contours of qualified immunity doctrine, and what the Supreme Court can do to shape or eliminate qualified immunity doctrine. Schwartz concludes by discussing a recent amici curiae brief she and other scholars of the law of qualified immunity (William Baude, Karen M. Blum, Alan Chen, Barry Friedman, John F. Preis, and Fred O. Smith Jr.) submitted to the Supreme Court calling on the court to reconsider qualified immunity doctrine. Schwartz is on Twitter at @JCSchwartzProf.

This episode was hosted by Luce Nguyen, a student at Oberlin College and the co-founder of the Oberlin Policy Research Institute, an undergraduate public policy organization based at Oberlin College. Nguyen is on Twitter at @NguyenLuce. 

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