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Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment
How the Supreme Court's decision to treat unreasonable policing as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment has shortened the distance between life and death for Black people
The summer of 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented, watershed moment in the struggle for racial equality. Published on the second anniversary of the global protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the law--and the U.S. Constitution--play in the epidemic of police violence against Black people.
In this crucially timely book, celebrated legal scholar Devon W. Carbado explains how the Fourth Amendment became ground zero for regulating police conduct--more important than Miranda warnings, the right to counsel, equal protection and due process. Fourth Amendment law determines when and how the police can make arrests, and it determines the precarious line between stopping Black people and killing Black people.
A leading light in the critical race studies movement, Carbado looks at how that text, in the last four decades, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect police officers, not African Americans; how it sanctions search and seizure as well as profiling; and how it has become, ultimately, an amendment of life and death.
Accessible, radical, and essential reading, Unreasonable sheds light on a rarely understood dimension of today's most pressing issue.
The summer of 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented, watershed moment in the struggle for racial equality. Published on the second anniversary of the global protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the law--and the U.S. Constitution--play in the epidemic of police violence against Black people.
In this crucially timely book, celebrated legal scholar Devon W. Carbado explains how the Fourth Amendment became ground zero for regulating police conduct--more important than Miranda warnings, the right to counsel, equal protection and due process. Fourth Amendment law determines when and how the police can make arrests, and it determines the precarious line between stopping Black people and killing Black people.
A leading light in the critical race studies movement, Carbado looks at how that text, in the last four decades, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect police officers, not African Americans; how it sanctions search and seizure as well as profiling; and how it has become, ultimately, an amendment of life and death.
Accessible, radical, and essential reading, Unreasonable sheds light on a rarely understood dimension of today's most pressing issue.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published April 5, 2022
7 people are currently reading
1290 people want to read
About the author
Devon W. Carbado
18 books29 followersDevon Carbado is the Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and the former Associate Vice Chancellor of BruinX for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. He teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, and Criminal Adjudication. He has won numerous teaching awards, including being elected Professor of the Year by the UCLA School of Law classes of 2000 and 2006 and received the Law School's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003 and the University's Distinguished Teaching Award, the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching in 2007.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 12, 2024
thorough and super accessible primer on 4th amendment jurisprudence, a major foundation for mass criminalization/incarceration, specifically through justifying stop&frisk and pretext traffic stops. I read this because of Carbado's fantastic piece on Black police officers in the Harvard Law Review. 4 stars because it's overly skimmable, it could have been much shorter and denser; however I know this is intentional to broaden the audience.
I really appreciate how there is no hopeful chapter at the end to ease the liberal reader's distress, as you often find in books about structural oppression. That gesture always feels disingenuous and counterproductive. America is built to make sure the majority of Black people fail and it's not a "what's next?" kind of situation.
I really appreciate how there is no hopeful chapter at the end to ease the liberal reader's distress, as you often find in books about structural oppression. That gesture always feels disingenuous and counterproductive. America is built to make sure the majority of Black people fail and it's not a "what's next?" kind of situation.
May 19, 2024
This was a really impressive overview of many 4th Amend jurisprudence issues and a persuasive call for education. Would be interested to see how this reads to a non-legal audience - can’t tell if it’s digestible or annoying (or both?). Loved the Whren rewrite, more rewrites of judicial opinions to prove points pls
February 14, 2022
Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment by Devon W Carbado is a clear and concise analysis of just one aspect, albeit a major one, of how the law (in this case the Constitution) is interpreted and applied in such a way as to empower police to maintain a white supremacist state.
The power of this volume is a combination of clear explanations of both law and specific cases (real and hypothetical) as well as the methodical approach to walking through the various subtleties in applying law to real life. This will engage both your analytical mind and, one hopes, your basic personhood.
As a (mostly yet always perceived as) white male I know that many of the situations explored would not happen to me. I have been stopped for traffic violations and either let go with a warning or given a ticket and sent on my way. Other than a glance into my car when my door was approached my vehicles and my person have never been searched at these stops. I have had friends who are Black or Brown in the same locales who have been detained for anywhere from 30 minutes to actually being brought into the station for infractions just like mine. The differences in those cases are similar to the ones discussed in this book.
As I've said in many of my reviews, this book should make a white reader uncomfortable. If we are honest with ourselves we know that we have received preferential treatment on many more than one or two occasions. You don't have to feel you're being accused of anything, you may not be fully aware or conscious of your privilege, but it is indeed there. Read this book to both educate yourself about how law can be twisted to serve injustice rather than justice as well as to make you more aware of how different our society can be for different members based on not only race but gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and many other elements of what makes a person a person.
Highly recommended for anyone wanting to gain a better and more detailed understanding of why the phrase "just don't break the law and you won't get stopped" is nothing more than either ignorance or a dog whistle. If you want to understand the how and why of basic police contact escalating for no reason other than police aggression, this will show you how our court system has enabled and even encouraged it.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
The power of this volume is a combination of clear explanations of both law and specific cases (real and hypothetical) as well as the methodical approach to walking through the various subtleties in applying law to real life. This will engage both your analytical mind and, one hopes, your basic personhood.
As a (mostly yet always perceived as) white male I know that many of the situations explored would not happen to me. I have been stopped for traffic violations and either let go with a warning or given a ticket and sent on my way. Other than a glance into my car when my door was approached my vehicles and my person have never been searched at these stops. I have had friends who are Black or Brown in the same locales who have been detained for anywhere from 30 minutes to actually being brought into the station for infractions just like mine. The differences in those cases are similar to the ones discussed in this book.
As I've said in many of my reviews, this book should make a white reader uncomfortable. If we are honest with ourselves we know that we have received preferential treatment on many more than one or two occasions. You don't have to feel you're being accused of anything, you may not be fully aware or conscious of your privilege, but it is indeed there. Read this book to both educate yourself about how law can be twisted to serve injustice rather than justice as well as to make you more aware of how different our society can be for different members based on not only race but gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, and many other elements of what makes a person a person.
Highly recommended for anyone wanting to gain a better and more detailed understanding of why the phrase "just don't break the law and you won't get stopped" is nothing more than either ignorance or a dog whistle. If you want to understand the how and why of basic police contact escalating for no reason other than police aggression, this will show you how our court system has enabled and even encouraged it.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
April 24, 2022
I received a copy of this book as part of a Goodreads Giveaway.
"Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the U.S. Constitution plays in the epidemic of police violence against Black people." This is how the blurb describes the book, and I would argue that it is a fairly apt description. Legal scholar and author Devon W. Carbado looks closely at the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and analyzes how it has been interpreted and applied to the police since its conception.
The book starts off with a glimpse into Carbado's past as a short explanation of his interest in the subject. From there, he makes every effort to keep his arguments and explanations as impartial as possible. He relies on logic and making connections for his arguments. While some of his conclusions seemed a bit premature/unsubstantiated (I reference one specific incident in which his claim is based on the premise that he understands the judge's motivation behind a specific verdict), I found most of his work to be compelling and well thought out.
Certainly, I felt like this book gave me a considerable amount to think about. I am interested in the school-to-prison pipeline and how, despite claims of no racial considerations, racial prejudice continues to leave the marginalized at a disadvantage. I felt like this book brought up an interesting argument that I haven't come across before. Looking specifically at the wording of the law and how it has been interpreted to allow specific behaviors rather than limit them as intended was fascinating, and honestly a bit horrifying. I feel like Carbado makes a fantastic point that we really need to take a closer look at both the legal and social systems that we have just accepted as they are, potentially for far too long. Progress and change are essential, and looking back at some potentially stagnant or outdated systems seems like a really good place to start.
"Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the U.S. Constitution plays in the epidemic of police violence against Black people." This is how the blurb describes the book, and I would argue that it is a fairly apt description. Legal scholar and author Devon W. Carbado looks closely at the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and analyzes how it has been interpreted and applied to the police since its conception.
The book starts off with a glimpse into Carbado's past as a short explanation of his interest in the subject. From there, he makes every effort to keep his arguments and explanations as impartial as possible. He relies on logic and making connections for his arguments. While some of his conclusions seemed a bit premature/unsubstantiated (I reference one specific incident in which his claim is based on the premise that he understands the judge's motivation behind a specific verdict), I found most of his work to be compelling and well thought out.
Certainly, I felt like this book gave me a considerable amount to think about. I am interested in the school-to-prison pipeline and how, despite claims of no racial considerations, racial prejudice continues to leave the marginalized at a disadvantage. I felt like this book brought up an interesting argument that I haven't come across before. Looking specifically at the wording of the law and how it has been interpreted to allow specific behaviors rather than limit them as intended was fascinating, and honestly a bit horrifying. I feel like Carbado makes a fantastic point that we really need to take a closer look at both the legal and social systems that we have just accepted as they are, potentially for far too long. Progress and change are essential, and looking back at some potentially stagnant or outdated systems seems like a really good place to start.
August 10, 2022
Cut police budgets in half
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews