Scholarship@WashULaw

Document Type

Response or Comment

Publication Date

2020

Publication Title

Jotwell

Abstract

Good citizenship and eager participation in police investigations would seem to fit hand-in-glove. The good citizen helps to enforce the criminal law, particularly if the physical safety of the citizenry is thought to be at risk. But as Bennett Capers argues in his essay, Criminal Procedure and the Good Citizen, this version of the good citizen—crafted and propagated by our nation’s highest court—falls into direct tension with the activist principles animating the Civil Rights Movement. For instance, Martin Luther King, Jr., insisted that the citizen not suffer from a cultural condition Capers describes as “too much respect for majoritarian law.” (P. 704.) The Movement, led by persons we now consider some of the greatest citizens in our nation’s history, rejected the notion of reflexive deference to majoritarian law and its enforcement.

Keywords

Civil Rights Movement, Good Citizen, Police Procedure, Police Searches

Publication Citation

Trevor George Gardner, What Would MLK Do?: A Civil Rights Model of “Good Citizenship” in Criminal Procedure, JOTWELL (September 9, 2020) (reviewing I. Bennett Capers, Criminal Procedure and the Good Citizen, 118 Colum. L. Rev. 653 (2018)), https://crim.jotwell.com/what-would-mlk-do-a-civil-rights-model-of-good-citizenship-in-criminal-procedure/

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