The Law of the Police Online Course Based on the CaseBook by Rachel Harmon

Meet the author Rachel Harmon

This course is based on the scholarship of Rachel Harmon. Rachel Harmon is the Harrison Robertson Professor of Law and directs the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia Law School. She is one of the nation’s leading scholars on policing and the law, a field of study she helped create.

Harmon’s academic writing considers how law influences police practices and how federal, state, and local law can make policing more effective, fairer, and less harmful. Her casebook, “The Law of the Police" (2d ed. 2024), is the first to survey how the law governs police encounters. Her articles on policing have appeared in law reviews as well as criminology and legal theory journals. At UVA Law, she teaches courses on criminal law, criminal procedure and policing law.

Buy "The Law of the Police" (not required to take the course)

Meet the Course Module Subject Matter Experts

Module One: Understanding Policing

Professor Melanie Reid, Associate Dean of Faculty and a Professor of Law, Lincoln Memorial University, Duncan School of Law

This module covers the structure and legal foundations of policing, the essence of modern policing, and the community policing philosophy. During this module, you will explore the different police organizational structures that exist and consider what exactly is the democratic police ideal.

Questions for your consideration throughout this module include: What is the function of modern policing? Do we know what good policing looks like, and how should we foster it? How should modern police grapple with the painful legacy of past police abuses and the ways in which the legacy of racial discrimination still distorts our criminal justice system?

This module explores the structure, history, evolution, and challenges associated with modern policing in the United States through a shared legal and criminological lens.

Module Two: Investigative Policing

Professor India Thusi, Professor Maurer School of Law

The primary objective of this module is for you to understand and apply general concepts that govern police investigative practices. You will learn aspects of constitutional criminal procedure investigation rules as derived from the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as federal, state and local statutory and regulatory rules.

Module Three: Preventing Crime and Making Arrests

Professor SpearIt, Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law

This module explores the topic of preventing crime and making a lawful arrest. While patrolling and investigating, police attempt to thwart crime by various means; one of the most common police tactics is known as the Terry stop, perhaps more commonly known as “stop and frisk.” We will explore the elements of this type of seizure, when an outer search may be performed on the individual and when police cross the boundaries of what the law allows.

In those instances when a crime has been committed or alleged, police may make a lawful arrest of an individual based on police work or based on obtaining a warrant for a lawful arrest. In each of these scenarios, police need to follow the proper protocols to not violate an individual’s 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition to exploring these aspects of policing, we will become familiar with the “reasonable suspicion” standard for performing a Terry-type preventative stop as well as the “probable cause” standard for obtaining a warrant and making a lawful arrest.

Module Four: Use of Force

Captain Ashley Heiberger, Use of Force Consultant and Expert

This module will introduce police use of force through a discussion of statutory and case law, as well as academic research and scholarship. It will provide an overview of force, and the evaluation standards (with emphasis on the criminal and constitutional standards). It will also address topics such as the force continuum, the duty to intervene, officer-created jeopardy, deadly force training and performance, and de-escalation.

Module Five: Policing Resistance and Federal Influence over Local Policing

Addie Rolnick, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Indian Nations Gaming & Governance Program, Associate Director, Program on Race, Gender & Policing

This module broadly addresses the role of federal law in local policing. Although policing is generally a local matter, federal law and federal officials help shape local police priorities and constrain local police actions.

Sub-module A – Federal Influence over Local Policing examines how federal priorities may directly or indirectly shape local policing.

Sub-module B – Policing Resistance examines the limits on how police can respond to resistance. It focuses on limits imposed by the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes.

Module Six: Traffic and Order Maintenance Policing

Nirej Sekhon Associate Professor of Law at Georgia State University

Module six examines policing car traffic as well as order maintenance policing. This is done through an exploration of how and why the police came to have primary responsibility for enforcing traffic laws followed by how constitutional law has responded to issues of pre-text and discrimination. Finally, other non-constitutional responses to pre-text and discrimination are highlighted including how new technologies propose eliminating the involvement of police officers in traffic stops.

The order maintenance policing portion of this module will define the threshold and legal basis for this topic and consider constitutional limits on vagrancy and the connection to “broken windows” policing through the use of a case study from New York City.

Module Seven: Suing the Police for Damages and Reform

Professor Christy E. Lopez, Professor from Practice at Georgetown

This module will cover suing the police for damages and suing the police for reform. One of the most contentious issues today is how to change policing to make it less harmful and more effective at protecting all communities.

This module dives into two of the most commonly used approaches: suing the police for monetary damages when police conduct results in injury and violations of constitutional rights or federal law and suing the police to secure changes in future police conduct. We'll look at the major doctrines--and major legal obstacles--to both types of suits and provide some behind-the-scenes insight into how these cases play out.

• For additional course information, contact Jessalyn Walker, American Bar Association Legal Education Police Practices Consortium: jessalyn.walker@americanbar.org
• For Distance Learning/Content information contact, Ginger Hunt, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law: gingershunt@arizona.edu
• For registration assistance contact, Arizona Law Online support: law-disted@arizona.edu