In collaboration with the History Book Festival, join us for a talk with Erwin Chemerinsky, author of Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights, an offering of the 2021 virtual History Book Festival. Devon W. Carbado will be in conversation with Chemerinsky during the event.

Presumed Guilty is a troubling history that reveals how the Supreme Court has enabled racist policing and sanctioned law enforcement excesses. The fact that police are nine times more likely to kill Black men than other Americans is no accident, the author says, but the result of an elaborate body of doctrines that allow the police and courts to presume that suspects are guilty before being charged. Beginning during Nixon’s presidency, the ascendance of conservative justices has led to rulings permitting the practice of “stop and frisk,” limiting suits to reform police departments, and abetting the use of chokeholds. Chemerinsky argues that an approach to policing that continues to exalt “Dirty Harry” can be transformed only by a robust court system committed to civil rights.

Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. His other books include The Conservative Assault on the Constitution and The Case Against the Supreme Court.

Devon W. Carbado is the Hon. Harry Pregerson Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where he writes and teaches on constitutional criminal procedure, constitutional law, and race and the law. His book, Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment, is forthcoming from the New Press.

We invite you to support the author by purchasing copy of their book from Browseabout Books. Call-in orders are accepted at (302) 226-2665 or you can stop by the store to purchase a copy. For store hours, please visit their website. Each copy purchased comes with a signed bookplate.

NOTE: this meeting is being conducted through Zoom. You MUST REGISTER to receive instructions for joining the meeting.

If you have need assistance with registration or getting your Zoom invitation, please email the History Book Festival.

Basic written instructions for using Zoom may be found here and a brief video tutorial may be found here. Closed captioning is available for this session. Information on enabling closed captioning in Zoom may be found here.