Civil Rights Deserts
Fred Smith (Stanford Law) and I wrote an essay for a symposium at Harvard Law School convened to consider threats to democracy and accountability in the second Trump Administration. Smith and I write that such threats are nothing new--indeed they exist throughout our country in what we call "civil rights deserts." We illustrate what we call "accountability deserts" and "enforcement deserts" through harrowing stories of civil rights abuses in Rankin County and Hinds County, M
My New Article: Monell's Quick Fix
One of the most powerful legal barriers to accountability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is Monell—the Supreme Court decision that recognized municipalities can be held responsible for constitutional violations by their officers but set an exceedingly high standard for such claims. Many have called for Monell to be replaced with vicarious liability, and some courts and legislators have expressed interest in the idea, but immediate prospects for meaningful reforms are dim. In this Art
New Mexico Law Review Symposium examining the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, which effectively ends qualified immunity for the state
Anyone interested in qualified immunity must pay close attention to New Mexico, which passed an act effectively ending qualified immunity in 2021. New Mexico Law Review held a terrific symposium about the statute, and the symposium issue (with my keynote) is out now. The entire symposium issue is at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmlr/ and my keynote is here: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmlr/vol54/iss2/3/ In addition to the articles, the symposium was terrific - a p
