Suchergebnisse

The rights revolution in the United States consisted of both sweeping changes in constitutional doctrines and landmark legislative reform, followed by decades of innovative implementation in every branch of the federal government - Congress, agencies, and the courts. In recent years, a growing number of political scientists have sought to integrate studies of the rights revolution into accounts of the contemporary American state. In The Rights Revolution Revisited, a distinguished group of political scientists and legal scholars explore the institutional dynamics, scope, and durability of the rights revolution. By offering an inter-branch analysis of the development of civil rights laws and policies that features the role of private enforcement, this volume enriches our understanding of the rise of the 'civil rights state' and its fate in the current era

Recent political science scholarship examining the institutional features of the rights revolution has highlighted the importance of the private enforcement of civil rights. This article discusses a less well-known line of Supreme Court cases concerning government liability that have undermined effective private enforcement of constitutional rights. I examine the impact of the Court's "procedural assault" on private civil rights enforcement and possible responses to the recent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere across the country regarding police use of force. After identifying the ways in which the Court has undermined a core strand of the rights revolution, I assess the challenges confronting the Obama administration and civil rights leaders as they respond to these developments.