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Qualified immunity has become one of the Supreme Court’s most controversial doctrines. But while there has been plenty of commentary criticizing the Court’s existing clearly-established-law test, there has been no thorough historical analysis examining the complicated subject of state-officer immunities under nineteenth-century common law. Yet the legitimacy of state-officer immunities, under the Court’s precedents, depends…

In recent years, there has been increased attention to the problem of police violence against disabled people. Disabled people are overrepresented in police killings and, in a number of cities, police use-of-force incidents. Further, though police violence dominates the discussion of policing, disabled people also disproportionately experience more ordinary forms of policing that can lead…

We are at a watershed moment in which growing national protest and public outcry over police injustice and brutality, especially against people of color, are animating new meanings of public safety and new proposals for structural police reforms. Traffic stops are the most frequent interaction between police and civilians today, and they are a persistent…

The Supreme Court’s habeas corpus retroactivity jurisprudence has never been a model of clarity or fairness. Ordinarily, if a case is on direct review, a court is bound to apply constitutional law as it currently stands, not the law as it stood at the time of trial, conviction, or sentencing. This rule derives from Griffith…

As arbiter of the constitutionality of executive actions, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) possesses vast authority over the operation of the federal government and is one of the primary vessels for the articulation of executive power. It therefore is not surprising that the OLC has found itself at the center of…