New 'Law of the Police' class open to law students, lawyers and the public
Starting next week, lawyers and law students can learn more about policing and the law, from anywhere and for free. (Image from Shutterstock)
Starting next week, lawyers and law students can learn more about policing and the law, from anywhere and for free.
The ABA Legal Education Police Practices Consortium, in partnership with the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, is launching a first-of-its-kind online course called “The Law of the Police” on Oct. 16. Through seven modules, it will explore laws police are asked to uphold, laws that hold police accountable and laws that protect citizens and police during interactions.
The course—which is self-paced and asynchronous—will be available through mid-December. It is based on The Law of the Police casebook, written by Rachel Harmon. She is a professor and the director of the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia School of Law.
In addition to the legal community, the course is open to police officers and the public, which Jessalyn Walker, the director of the ABA Legal Education Police Practices Consortium, considers one of its major benefits.
“We wanted to make sure this material reached an even wider audience than the casebook could,” Walker says. “I think it is so important that more people understand and have access to it. So I reached out across the consortium’s network of 50-plus law schools and said, ‘Who would be willing to host this?’”
“The University of Arizona stood up,” adds Walker, explaining the school’s robust online training team helped design the curriculum and upload it to its virtual learning platform.
In each module, law professors or other experts from around the country will offer lectures on topics related to policing and the law, including investigative policing, preventing crime and making arrests, and use of force. The seventh lecture covers suing the police for damages or for reform.
The deans of ABA-accredited law schools created the ABA Legal Education Police Practices Consortium after the murder in 2020 of George Floyd and other Black Americans by police. Housed within the Criminal Justice Section, it aims to develop model police practices and initiate projects that support effective policing, promote racial equity in the criminal justice system and eliminate racially motivated law enforcement tactics.
“We want to create a shared, common understanding of this issue so that we all are working, if not toward the same change, then the understanding where there may be opportunities for it,” Walker says.
“I see this course as a level setting and an opportunity for all folks to better understand the current lay of the land and where we could go,” she adds.
The University of Arizona Law will offer weekly professional development hour certificates to registrants of the course. It will be offered again in March.
For more information, visit “The Law of the Police” course website.
