I posted the following very highly critical comments on Bush v. Gore some years ago. In view of President Trump’s apparent determination to retain the presidency through the Supreme Court, I thought you might be interested in reading this post in case you missed it the first time. ——————————————————————————————————————– It is one of the worst […]…

The en banc Eighth Circuit was sharply divided about the existence of a Fourth Amendment seizure in a case where, among other things, a person fled after an officer in a police car stopped directly in front of him and his friend, one Michael Brown (yes, that Michael Brown, who was subsequently shot and killed […]…

Some weeks ago, three of us, Professor Steve Schwinn of UIC John Marshall Law School, Chicago-area experienced litigator John Murphey and I talked about qualified immunity at a Zoom program sponsored by the UIC John Marshall American Constitution Society student group. It was a very good discussion, in my view, covering the basics of qualified […]…

As some of you may know, the “BDS” movement is a political movement that advocates Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions directed at the State of Israel. In response to the BDS movement, there has been a fair amount of state legislation, including in Illinois. Needless to say, this kind of legislation raises interesting First Amendment questions. […]…

Do you park your car in public spaces? The Sixth Circuit’s Fourth Amendment tire-chalking decision in Taylor v. City of Saginow, 922 F.3d 328 (6th Cir. 2019) is an interesting one, especially if you drive a car and sometimes park it in public parking spaces (and who doesn’t?). After Taylor, you may be able to […]…

First Amendment Retaliatory Prosecutions, Arrests and Civil Proceedings: The Eleventh Circuit Gets It Wrong Does the Court’s retaliatory arrest-First Amendment decision in Nieves v. Bartlett, 139 S. Ct. 1715 (2019), which ruled that such plaintiffs must allege and prove the absence of probable cause as an element of the claim (and that probable cause is […]…

Section 1983 damages liability for constitutional violations depends on the threshold existence of a defendant’s state action within the meaning of the 14th Amendment and on the related statutory requirement of color of law. Fortunately, the general rule about the relationship between state action and color of law may be simply put: where there is […]…