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“Qualified immunity” is what you’re looking for. The original justification was to protect government officials (primarily law enforcement) from excessive, friv

• alsetmusic 3y ago
  > Time to adjust the laws (which requires a functional Congress, which we don’t have). This is the thing that frustrates me the most about the current state of USA politics. The inability to functionally govern and reach bi-partisan support for a lot of meaningful issues renders us helpless to improve bad systems. Meanwhile, corporations continue to dilute the value of their products and services or jack up the price beyond the rate of inflation and no real regulation seems possible.
  • yieldcrv 3y ago
    Remember, it is perfectly valid to be equally aware of how the parties are different, but being more frustrated by the ways they are the same Don’t let partisans gaslight you over their desperate struggles for the ring of power yes, the sides are different, there are ways they are the same
    • ajross 3y ago
      > Remember, it is perfectly valid to be equally aware of how the parties are different, but being more frustrated by the ways they are the same That's an easy genericism. In fact this particular issue under discussion is quite asymmetric. It's routine for a republican congress to block legislation that would otherwise pass (c.f. current bills for border security and Ukraine aid, our now-quarterly government shutdown jamboree, etc...). The reverse really is not true. I can't think of a notable bipartisan bill in the last decade blocked by a democratically-controlled government organ. Can you? It's perfectly valid to have complaints about both parties, but not to invent frustrations about how they are the same.
      • kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y ago
        Republicans block bills because they're stuffed full of unrelated things (by design - that way they can easily be painted as the bad guys - which is working, see your own comment). I'm not saying that the reverse doesn't happen - perhaps Democrats are okay with bloated bills, I dunno. Good rule of thumb is when a bill is blocked by one party, go find out everything that's in it and what parts the blocking party objected to. I guarantee it won't be the stuff the bill is named after.
        • jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
          Nonsense. Republicans were given everything they asked for on the border as a stand alone offer and refused it. It has nothing to do with some sort of genuine political position over riders on bills, and a simple examination of literally anything republicans have sponsored in the last 30 years will demonstrate that starkly. The point is obstructionism instead of governance.
          • mlrtime 3y ago
            It's still quote humorous how Biden can create these messes and yet Republicans are still the bad guys here... This is how nothing changes.
            • jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
              Republicans have blocked any attempt at reforming immigration, going back to Bush Jr's proposed bill in 2005. They have blocked bills with the exact terms they demanded just the day before. They are factually the bad guys here.
        • oivey 3y ago
          What you’re describing is called compromise: you get what you want in exchange for something else.
          • ozr 3y ago
  • IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    actually, one can argue that bipartisan support is the last thing you want because that's how 90% violate the rights for the 10% (and eventually, to 100% since we all take turns at being part of the 10%). Case in point: Patriot ACT. SOPA attempts. Asset Forfeiture. In contrast, see the most unruly place in Europe: Switzerland. Politicians bicker about inane things like updating language spelling, which caused huge uproar in 2006 [0] . 10 years later, you had the Cow Horns debate [1] of 2018, and its own sort of epilogue with the firestorm around cowbells [2] You also have a weak executive with rotating posts of only 1 year. [3] So, nothing gets done (by design). And when policians work out a small miracle via bipartisanship, they still must jump the hurdle of direct democracy and win over the population. Moreover, anything can be reversed with a very small minority [3,4] calling for a referendum, anytime. Yet Switzerland its the longest living democracy in the world with insanely high levels of development and prosperity. [0] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/chaos-fears-loom-over-spelling-row/4042016 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/chaos-fears-loom-over-s... [1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/podcast_campaigning-for-cow-horns/42099330 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/podcast_campaigning-... [2]https://www.iamexpat.ch/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/cowbell-noise-complaint-switzerland-captures-world-headlines https://www.iamexpat.ch/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/cowbell-noi... [3] https://www.thelocal.ch/20211129/a-foreigners-guide-to-understanding-swiss-politics-in-five-minutes https://www.thelocal.ch/20211129/a-foreigners-guide-to-under... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2014_Swiss_immigration_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2014_Swiss_immigratio...
    • throwaway2037 3y ago
      > Switzerland its the longest living democracy in the world I Googled that and found: This highly authoritative article from World Economic Forum that disagrees with you: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-worlds-oldest-democracies/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-wor... And, a bunch of Internet randos arguing about it here: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-80426,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-80426,... As an outsider, highly advanced democracies appear to argue about very small things because most of the big things are done right. See also: Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Canada, Finland, etc.
• kmonsen 3y ago
  Isn't QI fully something the supreme court made up and unlikely to go away whatever congress does?
  • alistairSH 3y ago
    See light-hue's sibling response. Yes, SCOTUS made it up, but there's no firm Constitutional basis for QI - their decision was based on other laws. IANAL, but my take is Congress could explicitly remove QI.
• btown 3y ago
  QI is atrocious. See some choice quotes from https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/19/qualified-immunity-is-burning-a-hole-in-the-constitution-00083569 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/19/qualified-... : > Although a prior court decision had held that it was unconstitutional to release a police dog on a suspect who was lying down, the court in Alexander Baxter’s case granted qualified immunity to the officers because, it held, the prior decision did not clearly establish the unconstitutionality of the officers’ decision to release a police dog on a person who was seated with his hands in the air. > Because no prior court opinion had similar facts, the appeals court judges dismissed Jayzel’s excessive-force claim, even though they believed Aikala’s decision to tase a potential domestic violence victim went “far beyond the pale” and violated the Fourth Amendment. > In Jessop v. City of Fresno, police officers stole $225,000 in cash and rare coins when executing a warrant. Prior cases had held that it was unconstitutional for officers to steal, but those cases were factually distinct — involving the theft of different types of property under different circumstances. According to the appeals court, the officers “ought to have recognized” that it was wrong to steal the coins and cash, but “they did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment” because prior court decisions “did not put the constitutional question beyond debate.”
  • redeeman 3y ago
    and I would argue that any body that clears officers for stealing coins, assuming its as clearcut as has been laid out here, is a failed treasonous(to the people) organisation that morally and ethically can should be destroyed by any means necessary
• light_hue_1 3y ago
  The courts have not "interpreted" qualified immunity to mean something. The Supreme Court in 1967 created qualified immunity out of nowhere to defend obviously racist cops in Mississippi. Specifically, they created it to put an end to people using Third Ku Klux Klan Act (Rights Act of 1871) to sue racist cops. This is part of a long history of preventing people from using Reconstruction Era laws to gain any meaningful civil rights. They did so by saying that 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (which was passed by Grant to fight the KKK) which was meant to allow people to sue for civil rights violations clearly intends to provide an exception for police officers if they acted in good faith (whatever that means; given that good faith here means enforcing a racist law often with extreme violence). But there's absolutely nothing in the actual law, the text passed by Congress or in the intent of Congress, that supports this reading. You can read the Section 1983 yourself: > Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia. A "judicial officer" by the way is a member of the court / judicial branch, not a police officer. Because there's no law, qualified immunity is a total mess. Different courts and judges apply it very differently. For some it's simply a blanket defense for essentially any acts. Ironically, Scalia and Thomas have both written dissents on the other side from the liberal judges at times, pointing out that there is literally no basis in law for qualified immunity and the Court should just drop it entirely. This isn't just a matter of adjusting the law to clarify the interpretation of Section 1983, although that would help. It also requires a long-term realignment of the Supreme Court who shouldn't be able to wholesale write laws this way. That's not me saying this, that's Scalia in Crawford-El v. Britton "[the Supreme Court] find[s] [itself] engaged...in the essentially legislative activity of crafting a sensible scheme of qualified immunities for the statute we have invented—rather than applying the common law embodied in the statute that Congress wrote".
• bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
  > “Qualified immunity” is what you’re looking for. The original justification was to protect government officials (primarily law enforcement) from excessive, frivolous lawsuits. Everyone else just has to get insurance, why can't they? If you don't have a downside for something you do more of it. There's even a name for this, moral hazard. This isn't a new phenomenon, so why are these people treated as exceptions?
  • alistairSH 3y ago
    Nuisance lawsuits would cripple the ability of government to do anything but defend itself in court. That's the theory anyway.
• isleyaardvark 3y ago
  > but since QI was only introduced in the 1960s, there’s very little case law proving that precedence. And worse, any precedent created is interpreted so narrowly as to be ridiculous. If a cop violates your rights on Tuesday, well you are SOL if they do it on Wednesday because there is no precedent for that.
• b112 3y ago
  I know how old common law is, and how far back through time its predecessors go... but 50 years is long enough for loads of case law to appear. Something else must be a blocker here.
• anon373839 3y ago
  As an historical point, qualified immunity is actually a softening of the harsher and much older doctrine of sovereign immunity (ie, “the king cannot be sued”). Congress relinquished some of the immunity state actors enjoyed, for instances where they violated a person’s constitutional rights. This left open the question of what happens if as-yet unrecognized rights were violated: > The evolution of qualified immunity began in 1871 when Congress adopted 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which makes government employees and officials personally liable for money damages if they violate a person’s federal constitutional rights. State and local police officers may be sued under § 1983. Until the 1960s, few § 1983 lawsuits were successfully brought. In 1967, the Supreme Court recognized qualified immunity as a defense to § 1983 claims. In 1982, the Supreme Court adopted the current test for the doctrine. Qualified immunity is generally available if the law a government official violated isn’t “clearly established.” If qualified immunity applies, money damages aren’t available even if a constitutional violation has occurred. If qualified immunity doesn’t apply, while the government employee or official technically is responsible for money damages, the government entity virtually always pays. So qualified immunity protects states and local governments from having to pay money damages for actions not yet deemed unconstitutional by a court. Source: https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice/qualified-immunity https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice/qualified-im...