Alex Reinert, Joanna Schwartz & James Pfander have posted to SSRN Watching the Sky Not Fall: A Study of State Qualified Immunity Reforms. The abstract provides:

Police violence like that visited on George Floyd in the summer of 2020 and unfolding today in cities around the country, elicits strong reactions. Reform-minded critics of police brutality call insistently for changes in the law of police accountability and in particular the law of qualified immunity. Defenders of the status quo worry that reforms will lead to a parade of horribles: an explosion of litigation, much of it frivolous; an increase in government payouts and insurance premiums; interference with effective police work; and the introduction of more significant challenges to hiring and retaining qualified officers.

Although predictions about the dire consequences that would flow from reform are often based more on anecdote than careful empirics, they were successful in preventing the enactment of reforms in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, except in two states: Colorado and New Mexico. Both states adopted new laws making a series of changes that included withdrawal of the defense of qualified immunity for officers sued by the victims of police violence.

In this Article, we report the results of a study of the impact of these reform measures. We focused on the experience of the two reform states (Colorado and New Mexico) and compared them to states that made no similar changes (Utah and Washington). We collected data through a series of public information requests directed to law enforcement agencies in all four states. The requests sought pre- and post-reform information on litigation filings, payouts, insurance premiums, and employee turnover.

We find that the reforms do not appear to be associated with extreme or even significant increases in lawsuit filings, payouts, premiums, or employee turnover. Rather, the data paint a picture of remarkable stability in the incidence and budgetary impact of litigation against police officials and their agencies. While we caution against treating this preliminary study as the last word on the subject, we conclude that the post-reform resilience of the civil rights litigation system casts doubt on many of the most alarming predictions of the opponents of reform.

Photo of Christopher Robinette Christopher Robinette

Christopher J. Robinette, an expert in tort law and theory, was appointed Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in 2021.  He teaches Torts, Products Liability, and Foundations of Tort Law Seminar.

Professor Robinette serves as the United States Representative to the European…

Christopher J. Robinette, an expert in tort law and theory, was appointed Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in 2021.  He teaches Torts, Products Liability, and Foundations of Tort Law Seminar.

Professor Robinette serves as the United States Representative to the European Group on Tort Law.  In 2012, Robinette was elected a member of the American Law Institute (ALI); in 2019, the ALI Council appointed him as Adviser to the Restatement of the Law Third, Torts.  Robinette also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Tort Law, the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to tort law in the United States, where he previously served as editor-in-chief. He serves as an editor of a leading torts treatise, Harper, James & Gray on Torts, and a leading insurance treatise, New Appleman on Insurance Law Library Edition.  Additionally, Robinette edits TortsProf Blog, a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network. He is an elected member of the European Centre for Tort and Insurance Law and a contributing editor at JOTWELL Torts. Robinette served as chair of the AALS Torts & Compensation Systems Section in 2017.

He has presented on tort law across the United States and the world, including the United Kingdom (Oxford), Poland, Austria, and Malaysia (where he won a “Best Paper” award).  Professor Robinette’s work has been cited by federal and state courts in numerous jurisdictions.  He is frequently quoted in the media in outlets such as the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, and The Washington Post.

Before coming to Southwestern, Robinette was Professor of Law at Widener University Commonwealth Law School, where he won both scholarship and teaching awards on multiple occasions.  In 2018, he received the Lindback Foundation’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Widener, a university-wide recognition awarded to one professor per year.  Robinette was also a visiting professor at the University of Iowa and Washington University in St. Louis.

Robinette served on the Advisory Board of Salvation Army corps in both Charlottesville, Virginia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; he was Chair of the Harrisburg Capital City Region Advisory Board from 2010-2012.  He was a member of the UPMC/Pinnacle Health Ethics Committee for several years, primarily addressing end-of-life issues.

Robinette litigated tort and contract cases prior to becoming a law professor, experiences he uses to engage students in his classes.

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