Presumed Responsible: How the Supreme Court docket Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

Library Journal • “Books and Authors to Know: Titles to Watch 2021”

Presumed Responsible reveals how the Supreme Court docket permits the perpetuation of racist policing by presuming that suspects, particularly folks of shade, are responsible.

Presumed Responsible, just like the best-selling The Coloration of Regulation, is a “smoking gun” of civil rights analysis, a troubling historical past that reveals how the Supreme Court docket enabled racist policing and sanctioned legislation enforcement excesses. The truth that police are 9 instances extra prone to kill Black males than different People is not any accident; it’s the results of an elaborate physique of doctrines that permit the police and courts to presume that suspects are responsible earlier than being charged.

Demonstrating how the prodefendant Warren Court docket was a short historic aberration, Erwin Chemerinsky exhibits how this extra liberal period ended with Nixon’s presidency and the ascendance of conservative justices, whose rulings―like Terry v. Ohio and Los Angeles v. Lyons―have permitted stops and frisks, restricted fits to reform police departments, and even abetted using chokeholds. Presumed Responsible concludes that an strategy to policing that continues to exalt “Soiled Harry” will be remodeled solely by a strong courtroom system dedicated to civil rights.