Aba Journal: Modern Law Library

Much has been said about police officers and departments who violate civil rights or enforce the law in discriminatory ways. But not as much attention has been paid to the ways in which the U.S. Supreme Court has enabled police excesses and insulated police from civil or criminal responsibility, says Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and author of the new book Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Chemerinsky discusses why the Supreme Court did not address police powers during the first century of its existence; why the Warren Court was an aberration when it came to curtailing police powers; and what his experience was like when he investigated the Los Angeles Police Department’s notorious Rampart Division in 2000. While Chemerinsky is not in favor of abolishing police, he also suggests several pathways for the American people to reform policing systems and buttress Four