Reasonably Unreasonable: American Use of Force Jurisprudence and Police Impunity

Abstract

This paper tracks Use of Force jurisprudence from the seminal cases of Graham v. Connor and Tennessee v. Garner to our contemporary moment. I am interested here in assessing the evolving meaning of “reasonableness” over time, especially as it relates to legal mechanisms such as qualified immunity which enable agents of the state to utilize excessive force with impunity. The logic of these cases is contextualized against the contemporary moment of reckoning with the realities of state-sanctioned anti-black violence, something from which a theory of reasonability cannot be cleanly separated.