[cglace]

"The other thing I would note is that qualified immunity and associated doctrines, which are near insurmountable obstacles to civil justice against police officers, are judge created law that can, and should, be sharply reined in by Congress."

Just curious, I know nothing about qualified immunity, what is it and why is it a problem?

[bradleyjg]

I took an entire class on §1983 in law school, I'm not going to be able to do justice to it in a comment. But the long and short of it is that there are a series of judge made doctrines that put a giant thumb on the scale when you sue a police officer for violating your constitutional rights.

Among many other things you must show that the right in question was "clearly established". But the courts have lately been requiring a case with a nearly identical fact pattern in order to find that a violation of a clearly established right. Worse yet, they have been taking the questions out of order and deciding that a right is not clearly established without deciding that there is a constitutional right in the first place. Which in turn means that that case can't be used as precedent for someone else.