College of Law Lecture Focuses on Police Violence and the Fourth Amendment

Despite emerging social movements and growing media attention, police violence against unarmed individuals continues to be a dire issue in our communities; scores of people are unjustly beaten, maimed, and killed each day. If the Fourth Amendment is designed to prevent police officers from using excessive force and also hold them accountable when they do, why does this problem persist?  Professor Osagie Obasogie will discuss these issues in the lecture “

A Feature, Not a Bug: Police Violence and the Fourth Amendment

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The research presented in this lecture blends sociological and doctrinal examinations with critical theory to understand the relationship between Constitutional commitments and police departments’ use of force policies. This draws attention to not only how the Fourth Amendment fails to do the work that we think it should, but also produces the problem of excessive force by police officers.

About The Speaker

Osagie K. Obasogie is the Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Bioethics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Joint Medical Program and School of Public Health. He leads the Health Disparities Research Cluster at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.

Obasogie’s research interests include Constitutional law, bioethics, sociology of law, and reproductive and genetic technologies. His work also looks at the past and present roles of science in both constructing racial meanings and explaining racial disparities.

His first book, “Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind” was awarded the Hebert Jacob Book Prize by the Law & Society Association and his second book, “Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics” (with Marcy Darnovsky) was recently published by the University of California Press. Obasogie’s writings have appeared in scholarly journals such as the Law & Society Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and Stanford Technology Law Review as well as journalistic outlets such as the New York Times, Slate, and Scientific American.

Professor Obasogie began his career at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, teaching courses on Constitutional Law, race, and law and the health sciences.

About the University of Cincinnati College of Law

As the fourth oldest continuously operating law school in the country and a top 35 public law school as ranked by US News & World Report, UC’s College of Law has a rich history. Its distinguished alumni include a U.S. president, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and six governors. The College cultivates an intimate learning experience with a 9:1 student to faculty ratio and offers a wealth of resources, such as more than 40 student organizations, five journals and seven centers and institutes. For more information, please visit

www.law.uc.edu

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