Erwin Chemerinsky > Quotes

“It is often forgotten today that Plessy v. Ferguson was not an isolated Supreme Court decision. In case after case, the Court reaffirmed and upheld the ability of states to enforce apartheid.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court

“Freedom of speech is essential to freedom of thought; it is essential to democratic self-governance; and the alternative-- government censorship and control of ideas-- has always led to disaster.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Free Speech on Campus

“In a society with a long history of discrimination, there should be a presumption that many laws with a discriminatory impact likely were motivated by a discriminatory purpose.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court

“My thesis is that through most of American history, the Court has usually refused to impose constitutional checks on police or to provide adequate remedies for police misconduct. Instead, it has created a series of legal rules that fail to protect citizens’ constitutional rights and that facilitate and even encourage racist policing.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre, and causing a panic. . . . The question in every case is whether the words are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” With relatively little elaboration,”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court

“In every case since then, without exception, the Court has rejected people’s ability to sue federal officers.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“The Constitution's failure to protect Native Americans, like its failure to protect Americans of African descent, reverberates to this day.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States

“Fourth Amendment, which requires a judge-issued warrant for an arrest; the Fifth Amendment, which requires a grand jury indictment before a person is held for trial; and the Sixth Amendment, which says that a person can be imprisoned only after conviction by a jury based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court

“(1) likelihood of (2) imminent, (3) significant harm.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court

“Campuses can never punish or censor the expression of ideas, however offensive, because otherwise they cannot perform their function of promoting inquiry, discovery, and the dissemination of new knowledge.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Free Speech on Campus

“women today are paid, on average, only seventy-seven cents for every dollar paid to men. On average, “African-American women earn only 62% and Hispanic women earn only 53% of the income of Caucasian, non-Hispanic males,” according to professor Marianne DelPo Kulow.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court

“Congress also should change the federal civil rights statute, 42 U.S. Code Section 1983, to hold cities liable for the misconduct of their police officers.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“Justice Scalia wrote for the Court that former attorney general Ashcroft was protected by qualified immunity because there was no clearly established law that his conduct was unconstitutional.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“Democracies are there until they are not. No form of government lasts forever. Only arrogance would cause us to believe that the United States is somehow immune to pressures for authoritarianism and that its current form of government somehow can endure indefinitely.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States

“For almost a century after the Slaughter-House Cases, the Court followed this narrow reading of the Equal Protection Clause and refused to use it to stop other types of discrimination. For example, in 1875, two years after the Slaughter-House Cases, the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional to deny women the right to vote.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, The Case Against the Supreme Court

“We need to stop venerating a document written in 1787 for an agrarian slave society and imagine what a constitution for the twenty-first century should look like.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States

“Congress should eliminate absolute immunity for prosecutorial misconduct and for police officers who commit perjury.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“In 1977 Justice William Brennan wrote a famous article, published in the Harvard Law Review, that encouraged the use of state constitutions to protect constitutional rights.52 State constitutions, he argued, “are a font of individual liberties.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“In California v. Hodari D. in 1991, the Court held that a person who is being chased by the police is not considered to be seized until he or she is actually tackled by the officer; chasing the individual does not constitute a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.63 But fifteen states have rejected this idea and said that under their state constitutions, chasing a suspect is sufficient to constitute a seizure and thus requires at least reasonable suspicion.64”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“States can provide more protection of rights under their constitutions than exists under the U.S. Constitution. To take a simple example, the Supreme Court has held that citizens have no First Amendment right to use privately owned shopping centers for speech purposes.57 But the California Supreme Court interpreted the state constitution to create a right in the state to use shopping centers for expression. The Supreme Court upheld this interpretation as permissible.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“Federalism should not provide state and local governments with the power to ignore the Constitution in any area, least of all in policing. Rizzo v. Goode, followed a short time later by City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, eliminated the power of federal courts to remedy proven patterns of racist, unconstitutional policing.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“Words can cause real harm and interfere with a person's education. Campuses have a duty to act-- sometimes legally, always morally-- to protect their students from injury.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Free Speech on Campus

“Life tenure for Supreme Court justices must be eliminated, in favor of term limits. Today Supreme Court vacancies occur due to accidents”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States

“Proof of knowledge of the right to refuse consent, Justice Stewart wrote, is not “a necessary prerequisite to demonstrating a ‘voluntary’ consent.”6”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“Although the federal and state governments rarely can be sued because they are protected by sovereign immunity,47 the Supreme Court has held that local governments—cities and counties—do not have sovereign immunity.48”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime.”28”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“in 2000 the Supreme Court declared this law unconstitutional, stressing that Congress by statute cannot overrule the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“Fourth Amendment protection against a search has a “twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’”11”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”23”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

“For suspects undergoing police interrogation, the rulings provide very little protection from coercion, so long as the officers don’t use physical force.”
― Erwin Chemerinsky, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights