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Moral Panics And Body Cameras, Howard Wasserman
Moral Panics And Body Cameras, Howard Wasserman
Faculty Publications
This Commentary uses the lens of "moral panics" to evaluate public support for equipping law enforcement with body cameras as a response and solution to events in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014. Body cameras are a generally good policy idea. But the rhetoric surrounding them erroneously treats them as the single guaranteed solution to the problem of excessive force and police-citizen conflicts, particularly by ignoring the limitations of video evidence and the difficult questions of implementing the body camera program. In overstating the case, the rhetoric of body cameras becomes indistinguishable from rhetoric surrounding responses to past moral panics.
Extralegal Supreme Court Policy Making, Joelle A. Moreno
Extralegal Supreme Court Policy Making, Joelle A. Moreno
Faculty Publications
The Colbert Report aired its final episode on December 18, 2014. Nine years earlier, on the first episode, Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness.” Truthiness satirized contemporary disinterest in empirical information in a country increasingly "divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart.” Truthiness was not just the Merriam-Webster word of the year. Over the past decade, it has been the unspoken mantra of reporters who give equal time to climate science denialists, faith healers, and vaccine refusers. When Justices of the Supreme Court decide questions of scientific or empirical fact — such …