zlacker

>>mnm1+(OP)
I'm curious - it's obvious what abuses of qualified immunity are driving this, but the law must have been originally put in place for a reason. Are there any examples where a police officer was shielded from prosecution for something that, if you or I did it would definitely be a crime, but that a reasonable person would say, "yes, this is a good application of qualified immunity"?

>>comman+9m
The idea behind qualified immunity is to protect government employees from nuisance suits over discretionary actions performed in their official capacity, excepting actions that violated local laws or civil rights. (Basically, it lets a human government employee make reasonable mistakes.)

The original laws of this country did not permit lawsuits against government employees acting in an official capacity. After the Civil War, the Civil Right Act of 1871 was passed allowing citizens and residents to sue government officials for civil rights violations suffered under color of law. The qualified immunity doctrine was created by the courts after that to shield public officials from nuisance suits for discretionary actions (generally meaning bureaucratic actions) by people angry over actions that went against them (i.e., for denials of licenses, judgments, etc.).

Unfortunately, due to the volume of nuisance suits, this doctrine got stronger and stronger over time. At some point, the courts began applying this strengthened doctrine intended for bureaucratic actions to police actions.

>>gamblo+qp
> The idea behind qualified immunity is to protect government employees from nuisance suits over discretionary actions performed in their official capacity, excepting actions that violated local laws or civil rights. (Basically, it lets a human government employee make reasonable mistakes.)

But why shouldn't all people be protected from nuisance suits over reasonable mistakes?

>>jstanl+uq
I would suspect it's a Hobbesian thing - we allow government to do things closer to a stage of nature (e.g. locking people up) and deny that pleasure to ourselves. As such because government employees by their nature do things with our consent that we can never do the potential for nuisance suits arises.

So if I grab someone off the street and handcuff them we can be almost 100% sure I'm committing a crime. If the police do the same thing we can be almost 100% sure they are not committing a crime.

Exceptions happen in both cases but it's not unreasonable (which isn't to say it's correct) to take make laws that take that into account.