Qualified Immunity
Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group Podcast
One of the most important doctrines in civil rights litigation is qualified immunity, which holds police officers and other officials immune from suit for constitutional violations unless they act incompetently or knowingly violate the law. This Supreme Court term may mark an important inflection point for the doctrine. In recent years, the Court has aggressively enforced immunity that protects officers from suits, but last term Justice Clarence Thomas called for the doctrine of qualified immunity to be reconsidered. On Wednesday, October 4th, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in District of Columbia v. Wesby, the latest case that involves this doctrine of qualified immunity. Professor William Baude of the University of Chicago joined us for a Teleforum on the current state of the Supreme Court's qualified immunity jurisprudence and its trajectory in light of Wesby and other cases.
Featuring:
Prof. William Baude, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law & Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Institute, University of Chicago Law School
William Baude is a Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches federal courts, constitutional law, and conflict of laws. His current research interests include different aspects of the Fourteenth Amendment (particularly both Section One and Section Three) and the nature of judicial discretion.
Among his other activities Baude is: the co-editor of two textbooks, The Constitution of the United States and Hart & Wechsler's Federal Courts in the Federal System; an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism; a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance; a member of the American Law Institute; an occasional blogger at The Volokh Conspiracy; and a podcaster on Divided Argument. He also recently served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Professor Baude received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and his JD from Yale Law School. He then clerked for then-Judge Michael McConnell on the United States Court of Appeals, and Chief Justice John Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. Before joining the Chicago faculty, he was a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, and a lawyer in Washington, DC.