Law Commons^™

Qualified Immunity: The Court's Brain Child & License To Kill, Laisha Harris

The Bridge: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Legal & Social Policy

Qualified immunity, a defense created by the imagination of the Supreme Court, prevents citizens of their right to hold law enforcement officers liable when they clearly violate a citizens constitutionally protected right. Throughout this paper, I will describe the historical context of Supreme Court decisions regarding qualified immunity, clarifying the errs in logic that perpetuate a system of racial violence, while using the doctrine of stare decisis to justify the overturning of the decisions that created the defense of qualified immunity.