7 ms·

Explain to me how qualified immunity is better than any ill it is supposed to address? And how is it that if you sue the government and win, then the judgement

• ibejoeb 8mo ago
  Two separate things. Qualified immunity is just immunity from individual liability afforded to government agents when conducting government business, as long as they are conducting it properly.
  • insane_dreamer 8mo ago
    > as long as they are conducting it properly. I think ICE has clearly demonstrated that this is not true
  • Refreeze5224 8mo ago
    Except the whole "as long as they are conducting it properly" part isn't actually true.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
      It might be true, it might not. Probably more useful to say "as long as they are conducting it properly" seems to have little impact on any of cases in which such immunity has been an issue.
• schmookeeg 8mo ago
  Especially when the implication in the article is the police tried to delete a video from evidence -- and still ended up getting to hide behind qualified immunity. Ugh.
• jfengel 8mo ago
  The ill that it's supposed to address is people hassling government officials who are just doing their jobs. Their jobs require them to do things that people don't want them to do, like making you pay taxes or go to jail for committing crimes. They are prominent targets and can easily spend their entire career fighting off complaints. Of course that promptly shifts the potential for abuse in the other direction. Supposedly, democracy is the control over that. If they are abusing their office, you vote them out. (Or you vote out the elected official supervising them, such as a mayor or sheriff.) It actually does work out most of the time. The cases of abuse are really few and far between. But in a country of 300 million, "few and far between" is somebody every single day, and a decent chance that it's you at some point. That said, it should be zero, and there's good reason to think that for every offender you see there are dozens or hundreds of people complicit in allowing it. The theory I outlined above can only handle so many decades of concerted abuses before they become entrenched as part of the system. At which point it may be impossible to restore it without resetting everything to zero and starting over.
  • rayiner 8mo ago
    Working in the criminal justice system for awhile in some capacity will really give you perspective on what people have to deal with.
  • adastra22 8mo ago
    > The ill that it's supposed to address is people hassling government officials who are just doing their jobs. How? If they're doing their jobs, then they are in the right and would be defended by their agency. If they are doing something illegal, they'd be in trouble. But that's the point!
    • PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
      They might be defended by their agency (though being "in the right" doesn't appear to be a pre-requisite for that anyway). But they would/could still be subject to lawsuit after lawsuit, which hardly suits the intended goal of government, does it?
      • adastra22 8mo ago
        Make the losing side pay attorney fees. (This is a general fix for a lot of issues in the legal system.)
        • parineum 8mo ago
          That's a good way to stop poor people from trying to sue anyone with better access to lawyers.
          • zbentley 8mo ago
            Poor people already cannot afford most legal services, and (other than a very small percentage of cases brought on a volunteer or nearly-volunteer basis at the goodwill of law firms) very rarely file suit without legal fees sought in restitution. Of those that don’t, it’s understood that recouping legal fees from lower income clients is far from guaranteed due to bankruptcy risk.
• rayiner 8mo ago
  Have you ever looked at legal proceedings involving criminals? It’s 95% noise and 5% signal. Criminals are, in general, bad people with a lot of time on their hands, and without qualified immunity you’d totally swamp the legal system with frivolous lawsuits.