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.”

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240524114328/https://newrepublic.com/article/181825/federal-judge-just-called-supreme-court

  • bazus1@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    5 months ago

    This Reeves dude sounds all right. I hope all his traffic lights are green on his way home.

  • progressquest@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    5 months ago

    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.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    5 months ago

    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