In Chicago in 1958, over a dozen police officers barged into the home of a sleeping family with guns drawn. They didn’t have a warrant, and it turned out they didn’t have the right man. When the family’s civil rights claim reached the Supreme Court, it resulted in the landmark case of of Monroe v. Pape, which finally — 90 years after Congress authorized such suits — opened the doors of federal courthouses to victims of unconstitutional misconduct by state and local officials. On this episode, we hear about the raid from people who experienced it firsthand.
Click here for transcript.
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, and Stitcher.
Guests
James Montgomery, James D. Montgomery & Associates
David Achtenberg, University of Missouri – Kansas City
Steven Winter, Wayne State University
Anya Bidwell, Institute for Justice
Resources
Steven Winter, The Meaning of Under Color of Law
Myriam Gilles, Police, Race, and Crime in 1950s Chicago: Monroe v. Pape as Legal Noir
Sheldon Nahmod, Section 1983 is Born: The Interlocking Supreme Court Stories of Tenney and Monroe
Paul Watford, Screws v. United States and the Birth of Federal Civil Rights Enforcement
Richard Pildes, Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon
Richard Aynes, Charles Fairman, Felix Frankfurter, and the Fourteenth Amendment
Screws trial transcript: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5
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