Reeves wrote that it was “difficult to see qualified immunity’s creation as anything other than a backlash to the civil rights movement,” given the historical context. “The justices took a law meant to protect freed people exercising their federal rights in Southern states after the Civil War, then flipped its meaning,” he noted. “In creating qualified immunity, the high court protected the Southern officials still violating those federal rights 100 years after the war ended. Southern trees bear strange fruit, indeed.”
Recent 5-4 podcast episode about Hans v Louisiana also does a good job of diving into this history and laying out just how much bullshit these immunity doctrines are built on,
This Reeves dude sounds all right. I hope all his traffic lights are green on his way home.
That is such a wholesome and lovely thing to hope for.
Qualified Immunity is the most bizarre and backward doctrine. It basically says that the constitution–you know, that piece of law that lays out how the government will protect its people from itself?–that it doesn’t always apply. As long as the government can think of a slightly new way to violate it, then it doesn’t count.
Sorry, are you implying that Clarence Thomas isn’t a civil rights icon that’s fighting for racial justice? Never have I heard anything so patently looney! /s
