“Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another.” – George Herbert Bangladesh has taken an increasingly regressive approach on human rights in the last few years. In December 2021, allegations surfaced online that the Inspector General of Bangladesh Police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) officers engaged in violations of international law, one being the [...]
Search Results for: qualified immunity
Limiting Bivens: The US Supreme Court's Reluctance to Allow Lawsuits Against Federal Agents
In the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, the legal doctrines shielding law enforcement from accountability have become increasingly scrutinized, with qualified immunity by far the most well-known (and most controversial). But on November 5, the Supreme Court announced it will hear at least one of three cases that address another form of immunity for [...]
Supreme Court issues unsigned orders in qualified immunity cases
The US Supreme Court issued two unsigned orders Monday regarding qualified immunity for police officers. The first of the unsigned orders involves Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, a case based on an incident in 2016. Daniel Rivas-Villegas is a police officer who responded to a 911 call from a 12-year-old girl reporting that she, her sibling, and [...]
Federal judge rules SFPD officer who shot and killed unarmed man will face trial by jury
A federal judge has ruled that San Francisco police officer Chris Samayoa will face a trial by jury for a civil case brought against him for shooting and killing a man fleeing from a stolen minivan in 2017. On December 1, 2017, Samayoa, at the time a rookie San Francisco police officer, was riding in [...]
In the New York Times on May 20, 2021, there was a story about a government program to pay off early loans to black farmers, to compensate for past oppressive lending practices. Bankers were criticizing the program because early payoffs hurt bank profits. Some white farmers sued and won a TRO, the court finding that “Plaintiffs [...]
US Supreme Court remands Eight Circuit qualified immunity finding
The US Supreme Court on Monday expressed their disagreement with the Eighth Circuit’s finding of qualified immunity for police officers in St. Louis whose use of excessive force in response to a suicide attempt led to the death of Nicholas Gilbert. They remanded the case back to the lower court for reconsideration. Gilbert had been [...]
Israel versus Hamas: Proportionality, Perfidy and the Law of War
“It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” -Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Spirit and the Poets (1917) Whenever Israel finds itself in the midst of major conflict with Hamas, each side seeks to defend itself in military and legal [...]
The Chauvin Verdict and Lessons from Brown: Who Are We, America?
On April 20, 2021, a jury convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd. Following the trial, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw reflected that “until the very moment the verdict was read, it was an entirely open question whether, to paraphrase the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott, Black people had rights that anyone [...]
The Derek Chauvin Trial as a Landmark in the American History of Racial Bias
George Floyd: I Can’t Breathe Jury: Guilty, Guilty, Guilty Biden: We Can’t Stop Here Outside the Hennepin County courthouse, Minnesota, Floyd family attorney Justin Miller said: What is justice when you lose a loved one? When you don’t have your father or your brother or your uncle anymore? I don’t really think there is justice. [...]
Rights experts call for ICC investigation into US police violence against Black people
A commission of human rights experts asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague on Tuesday to investigate the pattern of systemic police violence against Black people in the US. This comes shortly after the commission released a 188-page report detailing the crimes against humanity committed by police and prosecutors in the US. Commissioners [...]