The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies

Summary

For years, the Supreme Court has turned a deaf ear to arguments that police officers should not be shielded by the legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” when they shoot or brutalize innocent civilians. “Qualified immunity” is just one of several rules invented by judges that stop the vindication of basic rights. But aren’t courts supposed to be protectors of individual rights? In The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, Aziz Z. Huq recounts a far more fraught history in which the link between the Constitution’s system of independent courts and the protection of constitutional rights has always been tenuous.

Federal courts have created many legal concepts such as “qualified immunity” that may seem abstract, but inflict real-world harms: A bureaucrat fires her employee for testifying in a legal proceeding involving the boss’s family. Police officers set a dog on a homeless man, leaving him severely wounded. A Mexican teenager is shot in the back at the US border—and dies. In all these cases, defendants walk away with minor or no penalties. Their victims had rights—but no remedies thanks to rules created by federal judges.

A powerful historical account of how courts have carved a gap between rights and remedies, this book will reshape our understanding of why it’s so difficult to hold the American state to the rule of law.