We investigate the relationship between civil litigation and policing activity at a systems level and take a step toward a more rigorous understanding of the effect of civil litigation as an accountability mechanism for law enforcement misconduct. To investigate, we assemble original data on every civil lawsuit filed against a police department in North Carolina between 2003 and 2011, which we pair with existing traffic stops data from 2002 to 2016. We hypothesize that as an agency faces an accumulation of lawsuits, the agency will scale back its discretionary enforcement activities. Empirical tests reveal a 16 percent drop in the number of monthly stops made by officers in the aftermath of new civil litigation against their department. However, reductions in discretionary police behavior appear to benefit white motorists while rates of stops of Black motorists remain relatively unchanged. Our findings highlight the role of litigation in police accountability as well as the seeming intractability of racial disparities in discretionary police behavior.
AlexanderMichelle. 2011. “The New Jim Crow.” Ohio State University Journal of Law9: 7–26.
3.
BarnesJebBurkeThomas Frederick. 2015. How Policy Shapes Politics: Rights, Courts, Litigation, and the Struggle over Injury Compensation. Oxford, UK; New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
4.
BaumgartnerFrank R.EppDerek A.ShoubKelsey. 2018. Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race. United Kingdom; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
5.
ChaninJoshuaSheatsBrittany. 2018. “Depolicing as Dissent Shirking: Examining the Effects of Pattern or Practice Misconduct Reform on Police Behavior.” Criminal Justice Review43 (2): 105–126. doi:10.1177/0734016817704696.
6.
ChristianiLeahShoubKelseyBaumgartnerFrank R.EppDerek A.RoachKevin. 2022. “Better for Everyone: Black Descriptive Representation and Police Traffic Stops.” Politics, Groups, and Identities10 (5): 807–816. doi:10.1080/21565503.2021.1892782.
Cobbina DungyJenniferChaudhuriSomaLaCourseAshleighDeJongChristina. 2022. “Defund the Police:’ Perceptions Among Protesters in the 2020 March on Washington.” Criminology & Public Policy21 (1): 147–174. doi:10.1111/1745-9133.12571.
9.
EppCharles R.1998. The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
10.
EppCharles R.2009. Making Rights Real: Activists, Bureaucrats, and the Creation of the Legalistic State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
11.
EppCharles R.Haider-MarkelDonald P.Maynard-MoonySteven. 2014. Pulled over How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
12.
EppDerek A.ErhardtMacey. 2021. “The Use and Effectiveness of Investigative Police Stops.” Politics, Groups, and Identities9 (5): 1016–1029. doi:10.1080/21565503.2020.1724160.
13.
EppDerek A.ThomasHerschel F.. 2023. “When Bad News Becomes Routine: Slowly-Developing Problems Moderate Government Responsiveness.” Political Research Quarterly76 (1): 3–13. doi:10.1177/10659129211070306.
14.
FarhangSean. 2009. “Congressional Mobilization of Private Litigants: Evidence from the Civil Rights Act of 1991.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies6 (1): 1–34. doi:10.1111/j.1740-1461.2009.01136.x.
15.
FarrisEmily M.HolmanMirya R.. 2023. “Sheriffs, Right‐wing Extremism, and the Limits of U.S. Federalism during a Crisis.” Social Science Quarterly104 (2): 59–68. doi:10.1111/ssqu.13244.
16.
FogelsonRobert M. 1977. Big-City Police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
17.
GalanterMarc. 1974. “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change.” Law and Society Review95 (9): 95–160.
18.
GlendonMary Ann. 1987. Abortion and Divorce in Western Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
19.
HaltomWilliamMcCannMichael W.. 2004. Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
HoangBai LinhBenjaminAndrea. 2024. “Defund’ or ‘Refund’ the Police? City Council Responsiveness to the Black Lives Matter Protests.” Urban Affairs Review60 (1): 387–419. doi:10.1177/10780874231187131.
HorowitzDonald L.1977. The Courts and Social Policy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Inst.
23.
JacksonJonathanFineAdamBradfordBenTrinknerRick. 2023. “Social Identity and Support for Defunding the Police in the Aftermath of George Floyd’s Murder.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations26 (4): 833–858. doi:10.1177/13684302221128230.
24.
KaganRobert A.2001. Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
25.
KoslickiWendy M.2022. “Criticism Does Not Constrain: Testing for Evidence of De-policing Following the Murder of George Floyd.” Policing:An International Journal45 (4): 586–599. doi:10.1108/PIJPSM-08-2021-0114.
26.
LermanAmy E.WeaverVesla. 2014. “Staying Out of Sight? Concentrated Policing and Local Political Action.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science651 (1): 202–219. doi:10.1177/0002716213503085.
27.
MelnickR. Shep. 1983. Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
28.
MortensenPeter BjerreLoftisMatt WSeebergHenrik B. Explaining Local Policy Agendas: Institutions, Problems, Elections and Actors. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
29.
MummoloJonathan. 2018. “Modern Police Tactics, Police-Citizen Interactions, and the Prospects for Reform.” Journal of Politics80 (1): 1–15. 10.1086/694393.
30.
PiersonEmmaSimoiuCameliaOvergoorJanCorbett-DaviesSamJensonDanielShoemakerAmyRamachandranVigneshBarghoutyPhoebePhillipsCherylShroffRaviGoelSharad, 2020. “A Large-Scale Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police Stops across the United States.” Nature Human Behaviour4 (7): 736–745. doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0858-1.
31.
PiersonPaul. 2000. “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics.” The American Political Science Review94 (2): 251–267. doi:10.2307/2586011.
32.
Piza EricL.Using Poisson and Negative Binomial Regression Models to Measure the Influence of Risk on Crime Incident Counts. Rutgers Center on Public Security, 2012.
33.
PowellZachary A.2023. “De-Policing, Police Stops, and Crime.” Policing:A Journal of Policy and Practice17: paac070. doi:10.1093/police/paac070.
34.
RosenbergGerald N.1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change?Chicago: University of Chicago.
35.
SancesMichael W.YouHye Young. 2017. “Who Pays for Government? Descriptive Representation and Exploitative Revenue Sources.” The Journal of Politics79 (3): 1090–1094. doi:10.1086/691354.
36.
ScheingoldStuart Allen. 1974. The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change, Vol. 2. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
37.
SchwartzJoanna C.2016. “How Governments Pay: Lawsuits, Budgets, and Police Reform.” UCLA Law Review63 (5): 1144–1298.
38.
ShannonBrooke Nicole. 2021. “Can Institutional Reform Have a Lasting Impact on the Policy Agenda? Evidence from the 10-1 in Austin, TX.” Urban Affairs Review58 (6): 1689–1718. 10.1177/10780874211038285.
39.
ShjarbackJohn A.PyroozDavid C.WolfeScott E.DeckerScott H.. 2017. “De-Policing and Crime in the Wake of Ferguson: Racialized Changes in the Quantity and Quality of Policing Among Missouri Police Departments.” Journal of Criminal Justice50: 42–52. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2017.04.003.
40.
ShoubKelseyChristianiLeahBaumgartnerFrank R.EppDerek A.RoachKevin. 2021. “Fines, Fees, Forfeitures, and Disparities: A Link Between Municipal Reliance on Fines and Racial Disparities in Policing.” Policy Studies Journal49 (3): 835–859. doi:10.1111/psj.12412.
41.
SpriggsJames F.1996. “The Supreme Court and Federal Administrative Agencies: A Resource-Based Theory and Analysis of Judicial Impact.” American Journal of Political Science40 (4): 1122. doi:10.2307/2111745.
TushnetMark. Critical Legal Studies and Constitutional Law: An Essay in Deconstruction. Stanford Law Review. 1984; 36(623): 623–647.
44.
WeaverVesla M.LermanAmy E.. 2010. “Political Consequences of the Carceral State.” American Political Science Review104 (04): 817–833. doi:10.1017/S0003055410000456.
45.
WeaverVeslaProwseGwenSpencerPiston. 2019. “Too Much Knowledge, Too Little Power: An Assessment of Political Knowledge in Highly Policed Communities.” The Journal of Politics81 (3): 1153–1166. 10.1086/703538.
46.
Who Is Guarding the Guardians? A Report on Police Practices. 1981. Who Is Guarding the Guardians? A Report on Police Practices. Washington, DC: The United States Commission on Civil Rights.
47.
WoodDan BWatermanRichard W.. 1991. “The Dynamics of Political Control of the Bureaucracy.” The American Political Science Review85 (3): 801–828.
48.
WorkmanSamuelJonesBryan D.JochimAshley E.. 2009. “Information Processing and Policy Dynamics.” Policy Studies Journal37 (1): 75–92. doi:10.1111/j.1541-0072.2008.00296.x.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
