Law Commons^™

Fair Notice, The Rule Of Law, And Reforming Qualified Immunity, Nathan S. Chapman

Scholarly Works

After many well-publicized cases of police wrongdoing, a growing number of courts, scholars, and politicians have demanded the abolition of qualified immunity. The doctrine requires courts to dismiss damages actions against officials for violating the plaintiff’s constitutional rights unless a reasonable officer would have known that the right was “clearly established.” Scholars argue that the doctrine impedes deterrence of rights violations and forecloses compensation and vindication for victims.

One line of attack has relied on empirical evidence to challenge what scholars take to be the main justification for qualified immunity, that it prevents the threat of constitutional liability from over-deterring …

Boots And Bail On The Ground: Assessing The Implementation Of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms In Georgia, Andrea Woods, Sandra G. Mayson, Lauren Sudeall, Guthrie Armstrong, Anthony Potts

Georgia Law Review

This Article presents a mixed-methods study of misdemeanor bail practice across Georgia in the wake of reform. We observed bail hearings and interviewed system actors in a representative sample of fifty-five counties to assess the extent to which pretrial practice conforms to legal standards clarified in Senate Bill 407 and Walker v. Calhoun. We also analyzed jail population data published by county jails and by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. We found that a handful of counties have made promising headway in adhering to law and best practices, but that the majority have some distance to go. Most counties …

Assessing The Impact Of Police Body Camera Evidence On The Litigation Of Excessive Force Cases, Mitch Zamoff

Georgia Law Review

In the wake of several hotly debated and widely publicized shootings of civilians by police officers, calls for the increased use of body-worn cameras (bodycams) by law enforcement officers have intensified. As police departments across the country expand their use of this emergent technology, courts will increasingly be presented with video evidence from bodycams when making determinations in cases alleging the excessive use of force by the police. This Article tests the hypotheses that bodycam evidence will be dispositive in most excessive force cases and that such evidence will positively impact the way those cases are litigated and decided. In …

Revisionist Municipal Liability, Avidan Y. Cover

Georgia Law Review

The current constitutional torts system under 42
U.S.C. § 1983 affords little relief to victims of
government wrongdoing. Victims of police brutality
seeking accountability and compensation from local
police departments find their remedies severely limited
because the municipal liability doctrine demands
plaintiffs meet near-impossible standards of proof
relating to policies and causation.
This Article provides a revisionist historical account
of the origin of the Supreme Court's municipal liability
doctrine. Most private claims for damages against
cities or police departments do not implicate the
doctrine's early federalism concerns over protracted
federal judicial interference with local governance.
Meanwhile, the federal government imposes …

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings 2016, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

In this Article, Professor Wilkes updates his research on police tasering by surveying the fatal taserings by police officers that occurred in 2016.

State Labor Law And Federal Police Reform, Stephen Rushin, Allison Garnett

Georgia Law Review

In April of 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reached
a settlement agreement with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police
(PBP) to correct a pattern of unconstitutional misconduct.' It was
the first time the DOJ had used 42 U.S.C. § 14141 to intervene
into a local police department to correct systemic misconduct.
The statute, passed in response to the Rodney King beating,
provides the U.S. Attorney General with the power to seek
equitable relief against troubled local police departments.
As the reform process began to unfold in Pittsburgh, "problems
soon emerged." The consent decree required Pittsburgh to
improve its process …

Missing Police Body Camera Videos: Remedies, Evidentiary Fairness, And Automatic Activation, Mary D. Fan

Georgia Law Review

A movement toward police regulation by recording is
sweeping the nation. Responding to calls for
accountability, transparency and better evidence,
departments have rapidly adopted body cameras.
Recording policies require the police to record more law
enforcement encounters than ever before. But what
happens if officers do not record? This is an important,
growing area of controversy. Based on the collection
and coding of police department body camera policies,
this Article reveals widespread detection and
enforcement gaps regarding failures to record as
required. More than half of the major-city departments
in the sample have no provisions specifying
consequences for not recording …

Disparate Impact In Big Data Policing, Andrew D. Selbst

Georgia Law Review

Data-driven decision systems are taking over. No
institution in society seems immune from the
enthusiasm that automated decision-making generates,
including-and perhaps especially-the police. Police
departments are increasingly deploying data mining
techniques to predict, prevent, and investigate crime.
But all data mining systems have the potential for
adverse impacts on vulnerable communities, and
predictive policing is no different. Determining
individuals' threat levels by reference to commercial
and social data can improperly link dark skin to higher
threat levels or to greater suspicion of having
committed a particularcrime. Crime mapping based
on historical data can lead to more arrests for nuisance
crimes …

The Grand Jury: A Shield Of A Different Sort, R. M. Cassidy, Julian A. Cook Iii

Georgia Law Review

According to the Washington Post, 991 people were shot to
death by police officers in the United States during calendar year
2015, and 957 people were fatally shot in 2016. A
disproportionate percentage of the citizens killed in these police-
civilian encounters were black. Events in Ferguson, Missouri;
Chicago, Illinois; Charlotte, North Carolina; Baton Rouge,
Louisiana; and Staten Island, New York-to name but a few
affected cities-have now exposed deep distrust between
communities of color and law enforcement. Greater transparency
is necessary to begin to heal this culture of distrust and to inform
the debate going forward about police practices …

Youth-Police Encounters On Chicago's South Side: Acknowledging The Realities, Craig Futterman, Chaclyn Hunt, Jamie Kalven

Georgia Law Review

We write from Chicago, a city in upheaval following revelations
about the police shooting of seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald.
In a matter of days, public debate about patterns of police abuse
and impunity, a discourse extending back to the 1960s and beyond,
has undergone a Copernican revolution. A set of propositions about
the nature of the problem, fiercely resisted for decades by public
and private interests, has been embraced by officials and the
media as axiomatic.
Perhaps the most striking expression of this sea change was the
speech Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave to the Chicago City Council on
December 9, 2015. …

The Problematic Prosecution Of An Asian American Police Officer: Notes From A Participant In People V. Peter Liang, Gabriel J. Chin

Georgia Law Review

Peter Liang is a former New York City Police Officer convicted
of accidentally killing a twenty-eight-year-old African-American
man, Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project.
On the evening of Thursday, November 20, 2014, Mr. Liang was a
rookie officer, 11 months out of the police academy. He and his
partner Shaun Landau, also a rookie, were on patrol in the Louis
Pink Houses, a public housing project built by Robert Moses in
East New York, Brooklyn. They were pulling, a mandatory
overtime shift ordered because of recent shootings in the Pink

Houses. This was only their second …

Commodifying Policing: A Recipe For Community-Police Tensions, Nora V. Demleitner

Georgia Law Review

Deadly police-citizen encounters do not occur in a vacuum.
They reflect our times and our society. Since the fatal shooting of
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the nation's attention has
been riveted on police killings. In small towns and large cities,
virtually all of the victims have been African-American. In some
cases, the fatal encounters led to riots. Large-scale investigations
by the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division have provided
insight into some of the incidents.
Deadly police actions against citizens can be viewed as an
internal police problem,' as a symbol of larger societal challenges,
especially racism, or as …

Keynote Address, Erwin Chemerinsky

Georgia Law Review

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Laquan McDonald,
Freddy Gray. So many others like them, who died as a result of
police abuses. It is, of course, why we are here today. We are also
here, as we have discussed throughout the day, to discuss the day
to day violations of constitutional rights by police that are endemic
across the country.
It is important to remember this is not new. Almost fifty years
ago, the National Commission on Civil Disorders, often called the
Kerner Commission, released its report, and discussed how almost
every major riot that occurred in a city …

Urban Policing And Public Policy-The Prosecutor's Role, Bruce Green

Georgia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments; Immigration And Naturalization -- Effect Of State Conviction Of Minor Drug Offense By Youthful Offenders -- Availability Of Relief From Mandatory Deportation Based On State Certificate Of Relief From Disabilities Granted As A Result Of The Conviction (Rehman V. Immigration And Naturalization Service, 2d Cir 1976), Donna R. Christie

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The United States, Developing Countries And The Issue Of Intra-Enterprise Agreements, Joel Davidow

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

Antitrust issues have become one of the main concern of the world economy community and the United Nations. For many years, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has multiplied the meetings to discuss the relationship between transnational enterprises and international investment and has engaged in reflections on methods to avoid a decline in international investment. However, these meetings failed to resolve the fundamental issue of the impact of international antitrust principles on restrictive arrangements between a foreign parent corporation and its local subsidiary, particularly where that subsidiary is in a developing country. If applied, multinational enterprises would be …

Expert Workshop Session: Regulatory Framework, Ashley Ferrelli, Eric Heath, Eulen Jang, Cory Takeuchi

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Children And International Criminal Justice, Fatou Bensouda

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Convening Experts On Children And International Criminal Justice, Diane Marie Amann

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of Possible Legal Responses To International Terrorism: Prevention, Punishment, And Cooperative Action, Jordan J. Paust

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Let My People Grow: Putting A Number On Strict Scrutiny In The Wake Of Holt V. Hobbs, Dana A. Schwartzenfeld

Georgia Law Review

Beards have always played an important role in human
society, especially in the religious context. One man's
beard even got him in front of the United States Supreme
Court. In Holt v. Hobbs, the Court decided that a prisoner
had a constitutional right to grow a one-half-inch beard
for religious purposes. In making the decision, the Court
made clear that the prisoner's religious interest far
outweighed any security threat that such a short beard
could pose to the prison. The Court declined to go any
further, however, in clarifying the beard length at which
the scales would begin to tip …

Extradition Treaty Improvements To Combat Drug Trafficking, J. Richard Barnett

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Good Cop -- Bad Cop: Police Violence And The Child’S Mind, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

Police violence against citizens lately has gripped the nation’s attention because of recent cases in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; and elsewhere. Children in those communities and nationwide have been directly and indirectly exposed to these well-publicized incidences of police killings and the aftermath of those killings.

Exposure to police violence may cause children physical, cognitive, emotional, and social trauma. Moreover, the exposure may negatively influence children’s mindsets regarding the criminal justice system and police.

Undoubtedly, these events of late are not the first and only instances in which children have been exposed to physically …

Extradition Treaties - International Law - The United States Supreme Court Approves Extraterritorial Abduction Of Foreign Criminals - United States V. Alvarez-Machain, 112 S. Ct. 2188 (1992), Michael R. Wing

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Routine Torture Practices Of The Saudi Arabian Government As "Commercial Activity" Within The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act Of 1976 In The Wake Of Saudi Arabia V. Nelson, 113 S. Ct. 1471 (1993)., Keith D. Bodoh

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Police, State Security Forces And Constitutionalism Of Human Rights In Zambia, Charles Mwalimu

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Security Council Comes Of Age: An Analysis Of The International Legal Response To The Iraqi Invasion Of Kuwait, Christopher John Sabec

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Human Rights - Haitian Refugees - Haitian Refugees Housed At Guantanamo Bay Naval Base Held To Have No Valid Constitutional Or International Law Claims To Challenge Forced Repatriation By The U.S. Government. Haitian Refugee Center V. Baker, 953 F.2d 1498 (11th Cir. 1992), Cert. Denied, 112 S.Ct. 1245 (1992)., Jason A. Golden

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Extradition Proceedings Against General Augusto Pinochet: Is Justice Being Met Under International Law?, Anita C. Johnson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

International Extradition Of Mexican Narcotics Traffickers: Prospects And Pitfalls For The New Millennium, Rishi Hingoraney

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.