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The Futile Fourth Amendment: Understanding Police Excessive Force Doctrine Through An Empirical Assessment Of Graham V. Connor, Osagie K. Obasogie, Zachary Newman
The Futile Fourth Amendment: Understanding Police Excessive Force Doctrine Through An Empirical Assessment Of Graham V. Connor, Osagie K. Obasogie, Zachary Newman
Northwestern University Law Review
Graham v. Connor established the modern constitutional landscape for police excessive force claims. The Supreme Court not only refined an objective reasonableness test to describe the constitutional standard, but also held that the Fourth Amendment is the sole avenue for courts to adjudicate claims that police violated a person’s constitutional rights in using force. In this Essay, we ask: What impact did this decision have on the nature of police excessive force claims in federal courts? To address this, we engaged in a qualitative examination of 500 federal cases (250 in the twenty-six years before Graham and 250 in the …
The Fallacy Of A Colorblind Consent Search Doctrine, Beau C. Tremitiere
The Fallacy Of A Colorblind Consent Search Doctrine, Beau C. Tremitiere
Northwestern University Law Review
Most searches conducted by police officers are “consensual” and thus beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment. However, such searches violate the Fourth Amendment when, under the totality of circumstances, consent appears to be a product of coercion—that is, when the consent was involuntary. In 1980, in Mendenhall v. United States, the Supreme Court identified race as a relevant factor courts should consider but failed to explain precisely why race was relevant. After decades of mistreatment and state-sanctioned violence, distrust of law enforcement was rampant in communities of color, and the Mendenhall Court correctly intuited (but failed to describe) the …