From the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, to the current legal standard for police violence (the Reasonable Officer Standard, set forth in the 1989 Supreme Court decision Graham v. Connor), American state violence has been legally codified in terms of reasonableness. And from slavery to the continued anti-Black police brutality of today, the code of reasonableness has routinely been employed to justify anti-Black violence. This thesis examines the overlapping histories of the concept of reasonableness and anti-Black police violence. Although it foregrounds reasonableness in its earlier roots, it focuses mainly on the legal standard of reasonableness established most recently in American jurisprudence for police violence––the Reasonable Officer Standard. To analyze how reasonableness is used to justify anti-Black police violence, this thesis shall construct a geneology, tracing the past of the present in three case studies of Black men murdered by police in Midwestern cities: Michael Brown, Dontre Hamilton, and George Floyd. By delving court transcripts, governmental reports, departmental archives, footage of attorney rhetoric, and many other artifacts of this history, the thesis will uncover how reasonableness has been employed by police officers, police departments, witnesses, jurors, attorneys, government officials, and the general public to perpetuate and justify anti-Black police violence, as well as the conditions that produced its efficacy.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Police","Anti-black","Reason"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 23788