Beyond the Brief Institue for Justice

Does qualified immunity actually accomplish what the Supreme Court intended? Kim Norberg and co-host Keith Neely discuss qualified immunity and how it plays out in the real world. IJ Senior Attorney Bob McNamara and data scientist Jason Tiezzi join to discuss Unaccountable, IJ’s new report that examines qualified immunity by the numbers.







The report uses the largest ever collection of federal appellate cases, covering the 11-year period from 2010 through 2020. It is also the first to use cutting-edge automated techniques to parse thousands of federal circuit court opinions and answer key questions about cases where government defendants claim qualified immunity—what kinds of officials and conduct it protects, its impact on civil rights cases, and whether the doctrine is achieving its aims.









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag6SLAnfKtw

























Unaccountable







When people hear “qualified immunity,” they tend to think “police misconduct.” But IJ’s qualified immunity cases frequently involve other types of officials and allegations. Now a new IJ study of more than 5,500 federal qualified immunity appeals shows those cases aren’t outliers. Unaccountable finds only 23% of appeals involved police accused of excessive force. Police often claimed qualified immunity, of course, but so did social workers, college deans, mayors, and many other government officials. And the violations victims alleged were similarly diverse, with almost 20% of appeals featuring First Amendment claims, usually premeditated retaliation for disfavored speech or other protected activity. Unaccountable finds qualified immunity hobbles victims of government abuses like these and fails to accomplish the goals supporters claim it’s needed to achieve, strengthening the case for ending the doctrine.









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Unbeknownst to parents, a portion of their baby’s blood remained unused after a standard screening was complete. And New Jersey had unilaterally decided that it could keep that blood for 23 years. Even worse, New Jersey, along with other states, believed it could use that blood however it saw fit, whether that be selling it to third parties, giving it to law enforcement, or even turning it over to the Pentagon.







On today’s episode of Beyond the Brief, hosts Kim Norberg and Keith Neely talk to IJ Attorneys Rob Frommer and Brian Morris about New Jersey’s creepy baby blood collection scheme.









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypXPwkNoFI









Case Page:  https://ij.org/case/new-jersey-genetic-privacy/







News Article: https://newjerseymonitor.com/2023/11/14/civil-rights-concerns-grow-over-baby-blood-tests-as-state-mulls-genomic-sequencing/  

Deep Dive is now becoming Beyond the Brief.  We will still bring you the same great IJ-related content as before, but now in a studio setting.  Stay tuned.

One of the most controversial practices in modern policing is law enforcement's power to "stop and frisk" individuals without probable cause that a crime has been committed. On today's show, we talk about the origins of this practice, the court rulings that normalized and expanded it, and the need--and opportunity--for the U.S. Supreme Court to scale it back.

Jeremy Bennett had no idea that asking an Ohio Department of Natural Resources officer to come back when his taxidermy shop was open for the season meant that he might face jail time for “denying” an inspection. Unfortunately, the courts have opened the door to this troubling disregard for property rights and facilitated warrantless inspections policies that affect a wide variety of businesses. In today’s show, we’ll discuss how this happened, how it affects ordinary Americans like Jeremy, who are just trying to earn a living, and what can be done to make things right.

In Virginia, any one of 176 so-called barrier crimes can disqualify a person from work in certain occupations for life—no matter how old the conviction, how unrelated it is to the work the person desires to do, or how little it reflects the person’s fitness today. These laws kept IJ client Rudy Carey from fulfilling work as a substance abuse counselor for people he is uniquely fit to help. In today’s show, we talk about what happened to Rudy and how he is fighting against collateral consequences laws that are irrational and unjust.









https://youtu.be/zjOqwT5M7Xw









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