Book Review of Unreasonable: Constitutionalizing Racism

Book Review: Jonathan P. Feingold, Constitutionalizing Racism, 104 B.U. L. Rev. Online 1 (2024):

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.’”

The actual title is: Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment and it was published April 4, 2022

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