Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
2024
Publisher
Boston University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
Unreasonable is Devon Carbado at his best. Through accessible prose, carefully crafted hypotheticals, effective visualizations, and some cross-examination (for the reader), Carbado reintroduces us to the Fourth Amendment. In arresting detail, Unreasonable" exposes how the Supreme Court has turned the Fourth Amendment against “the people”—and specifically, against people racialized as Black. Part of the “Bill of Rights,” the Fourth Amendment was adopted to protect “the right of the people” from police overreach. Yet over the past half-century, the Supreme Court has systematically repositioned the Fourth Amendment as a weapon of police power. Or as Carbado argues: whereas many assume that the Bill of Rights was intended to “protect and empower ‘we the people,’ [Unreasonable] contends that Fourth Amendment law overly protects and empowers ‘we the police.’”
Recommended Citation
Jonathan Feingold,
Constitutionalizing Racism
,
in
104
Boston University Law Review Online
1
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3912
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Fourth Amendment Commons, Law and Race Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons
Comments
Part of the BULR Book Symposium on Devon Carbado's Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment