There are people, judges and law school professors and tee vee pundits, mostly, who would have us believe the law is a thing apart from everyday society – above mere politics and fashion and moved only by logic, precedent and justice.
But it’s not so. The statutes our legislatures pass and the decisions our courts render are a reflection of the contemporary world. The Dred Scott decision, which said an escaped slave would find refuge nowhere in America, could only have come in the context of 1857, and so it was with Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.
So what will legal historians discern about our era when they examine last week’s Supreme Court decision in the case of Atwater v. Lago Vista? By a five-to-four margin, the court ruled that police have the authority to arrest and jail citizens even for minor offenses. In the case at hand, Gail Atwater of Texas was arrested and jailed for failing to wear a seat belt or place one on her two children.
The first thing we should note about this case is a statement by Stephen R. McSpadden, general counsel to the National Association of Police Organizations. According to Mr. McSpadden, we should not be concerned that police officers may abuse this new guideline because, “if the police arrest everybody, there is going to be political protest.” There you have it. Rest assured, the police will not be arresting everybody and packing them off to the hoosegow for minor offenses. For example, white people in wealthy, suburban neighborhoods probably don’t need to lose sleep over this. Of course, Ms. Atwater of the recent decision was from one such neighborhood, but her case is probably anomalous. Hey, if Gail Atwater hadn’t been a white soccer mom, the case would have never gone to the Supreme Court at all. If you’re black, or Latino, or just drive an old junker, better buckle up – and make sure you don’t have a broken taillight lens, or spit on the sidewalk, or loiter.
This Supreme Court decision is born into a world where the state of New Jersey is trying to pull a justice off the bench for his “see-no-evil” approach to racial profiling when he was attorney general. New Jersey has taken a good deal of flak in recent years for its racial profiling by state police, and rightly so, but New Jersey is at least confronting its problem. Racial profiling is the rule in America, not the exception.
What else is there? There are numerous and continuing stories of prisoners being released from death row, often after years of incarceration and close brushes with execution. In many of these cases, innocent people were convicted because police and prosecutors deliberately hid or overlooked evidence that would have exonerated them. If police are willing to play fast and loose with a person’s life, how can we expect them to exercise judgment and restraint in cases involving minor infractions of the law?
People who have been released from death row have it easy, compared to Amadou Diallo, who was shot 19 times for doing nothing wrong, or Patrick Dorismund, who was killed because he didn’t sell drugs to an undercover officer.
At the Republican convention in Philadelphia last year, people were thrown in jail on a million dollars’ bail, and when they came to trial, all charges were dropped – they hadn’t even committed minor infractions. Their crime was that the Philadelphia P.D. knew they had a history of political protest, even though Stephen McSpadden says political protest will save us from abuse by police. Not in that case, it didn’t.
In Cincinnati and Detroit, in Los Angeles and New York, parents are afraid to let their children walk the streets, not because of crime, but because of the police.
As Mr. McSpadden said, the police won’t arrest everybody – or profile everybody, or send every innocent person to jail, or shoot everybody – only the powerless ones.
“If the police arrest everybody…”
There are people, judges and law school professors and tee vee pundits, mostly, who would have us believe the law is a thing apart from everyday society – above mere politics and fashion and moved only by logic, precedent and justice.
But it’s not so. The statutes our legislatures pass and the decisions our courts render are a reflection of the contemporary world. The Dred Scott decision, which said an escaped slave would find refuge nowhere in America, could only have come in the context of 1857, and so it was with Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.
So what will legal historians discern about our era when they examine last week’s Supreme Court decision in the case of Atwater v. Lago Vista? By a five-to-four margin, the court ruled that police have the authority to arrest and jail citizens even for minor offenses. In the case at hand, Gail Atwater of Texas was arrested and jailed for failing to wear a seat belt or place one on her two children.
The first thing we should note about this case is a statement by Stephen R. McSpadden, general counsel to the National Association of Police Organizations. According to Mr. McSpadden, we should not be concerned that police officers may abuse this new guideline because, “if the police arrest everybody, there is going to be political protest.” There you have it. Rest assured, the police will not be arresting everybody and packing them off to the hoosegow for minor offenses. For example, white people in wealthy, suburban neighborhoods probably don’t need to lose sleep over this. Of course, Ms. Atwater of the recent decision was from one such neighborhood, but her case is probably anomalous. Hey, if Gail Atwater hadn’t been a white soccer mom, the case would have never gone to the Supreme Court at all. If you’re black, or Latino, or just drive an old junker, better buckle up – and make sure you don’t have a broken taillight lens, or spit on the sidewalk, or loiter.
This Supreme Court decision is born into a world where the state of New Jersey is trying to pull a justice off the bench for his “see-no-evil” approach to racial profiling when he was attorney general. New Jersey has taken a good deal of flak in recent years for its racial profiling by state police, and rightly so, but New Jersey is at least confronting its problem. Racial profiling is the rule in America, not the exception.
What else is there? There are numerous and continuing stories of prisoners being released from death row, often after years of incarceration and close brushes with execution. In many of these cases, innocent people were convicted because police and prosecutors deliberately hid or overlooked evidence that would have exonerated them. If police are willing to play fast and loose with a person’s life, how can we expect them to exercise judgment and restraint in cases involving minor infractions of the law?
People who have been released from death row have it easy, compared to Amadou Diallo, who was shot 19 times for doing nothing wrong, or Patrick Dorismund, who was killed because he didn’t sell drugs to an undercover officer.
At the Republican convention in Philadelphia last year, people were thrown in jail on a million dollars’ bail, and when they came to trial, all charges were dropped – they hadn’t even committed minor infractions. Their crime was that the Philadelphia P.D. knew they had a history of political protest, even though Stephen McSpadden says political protest will save us from abuse by police. Not in that case, it didn’t.
In Cincinnati and Detroit, in Los Angeles and New York, parents are afraid to let their children walk the streets, not because of crime, but because of the police.
As Mr. McSpadden said, the police won’t arrest everybody – or profile everybody, or send every innocent person to jail, or shoot everybody – only the powerless ones.