David Andrew Harris

University of Pittsburgh | Pitt · Law

News reports about police and science like DNA identification, and popular entertainment like the television program CSI and its many imitators, give the impression that science is now the handmaiden of law enforcement. But this picture is at best misleading. Law enforcement does rely on some scientific techniques, but far more often police and pro...

Despite efforts to reform immigration law in the 1980s and the 1990s, the new laws passed in those decades by the Congress did not solve the long-term problems raised by undocumented people entering the United States. The issue arose anew after the terrorist attacks of September, 2001. While the advocates for immigration crackdowns in the 1980s and...

This chapter, part of a larger effort to examine the prosecutorial role in different legal systems, examines the interaction and relationship between American prosecutors and police departments, and the consequences of these arrangements for police misconduct and efforts to reform police agencies. It begins with a description of how these disparate...

In this brief essay, David Harris reviews Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, by Alexandra Natapoff (New York University Press, 2009). This excellent new book is long overdue. It exposes the use of informants by American law enforcements in all of its tawdry detail, and explains how these practices exact a substantia...

The Use of Force Working Group was convened at the request of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr. The purpose of this independent body was to study police use of "electronic control devices," commonly called "Tasers™" and to make findings and recommendations to the District Attorney. Chaired initially by the Honorable Ralph J...

A new technology has emerged with the potential to increase police compliance with the law and to increase officers’ accountability for their conduct. Called “body worn video” (BWV) or “head cams,” these devices are smaller, lighter versions of the video and audio recording systems mounted on the dash boards of police cars. These systems are small...

In just a few years, seven decades will have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Korematsu v. U.S., one of the most reviled of all of the Court’s cases. Despised or not, however, similarities between the World War II era and our own have people looking at Korematsu in a new light. When the Court decided Korematsu in 1944, we were at w...

For the first time in a generation, real reform in the criminal justice system seems within reach. Five bills were introduced in Congress in 2009 to address the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder forms of cocaine. The proposed Justice Integrity Act would "address any unwarranted racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal proc...

The Use of Force Working Group was convened in October of 2008 to study police use of electronic control devices, better known as Tasers. Allegheny County (Pa.) District Attorney Stephen A Zappala, Jr. appointed the Working Group in the wake of an incident in which a person died following a Taser exposure at the hands of local police officers. This...

In Hudson v. Michigan, a knock-and-announce case, Justice Scalia's majority opinion came close to jettisoning the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. The immense costs of the rule, Scalia said, outweigh whatever benefits might come from it. Moreover, police officers and police departments now generally follow the dictates of the Fourth Amendment, s...

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies have actively sought partnerships with Muslim communities in the U.S. Consistent with community-based policing, these partnerships are designed to persuade members of these communities to share information about possible extremist activity. These cooperative efforts have borne fruit,...

In his book, "War by Other Means", John Yoo, a former high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush, attempts to advance legal justifications for many of the Administration's most controversial programs in the war on terror, including coercive interrogations, the National Security A...

For years, criminologists have directed research efforts at questions at the intersection of race and law enforcement. This has not always been welcomed by practitioners, to put it mildly; rather, many police officers view research focused on race and policing as nothing short of an attempt to paint the policing profession and police officers as ra...

In post-9/11 America, preventing the next terrorist attack ranks as law enforcement's top priority. This is as true for local police departments as it is for the FBI. This has led many advocates of stronger enforcement of U.S. immigration law to recast their efforts as anti-terrorism campaigns. As part of this endeavor, these advocates have called...

John Yoo, War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006, pp. 224.

The issue of racial and ethnic bias in policing has been the focus of legal and criminal justice scholarship, court action, and public debate in the U.S. for a number of years. The issue has also been prominent in criminal justice scholarship, public discussion, and policy making in other countries, particularly the U.K., for an even longer period....

Bruce Ackerman, Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 240.

Racial profiling of drivers - often called "driving while black" - has taken an increasingly important role in the public debate on issues of race and criminal justice. It is one of the few such issues that has penetrated not only the public discourse, but the legislative process as well.This article takes three different approaches in attempting t...

In just the past few terms, the Supreme Court has issued several decisions that have increased police discretion to stop and question drivers and passengers and search both these persons and their vehicles. These cases are only the latest in a line that has slowly but surely made it ever easier for police to do these things without being concerned...

Under a Constitution that restrains the government vis-a-vis the individual and that puts some limits on what the authorities may do in the pursuit of the guilty, the power of the police to stop any particular driver, at almost any time, it seems oddly out of place. And with the words "equal justice under law" carved into the stone of the Supreme C...