Last night, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away due to complications from cancer. Justice Ginsburg, the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court, became well-known late in her career for authoring and joining in many poignant dissents. She was also a known skeptic of the qualified immunity doctrine.
Justice Ginsburg joined the dissent in Kisela v. Hughes, a case where a police officer who shot a woman four times because she was holding a kitchen knife was granted qualified immunity. The dissent criticized the doctrine as an “absolute shield for law enforcement officers, gutting the deterrent effect of the Fourth Amendment.”
The late justice’s voice will be missed be many.