Scholar Scalia Cites in Hudson Not So Thrilled to Have Been Cited by Scalia

Actually, “not so thrilled” is putting it mildly.


I just spoke with Prof. Sam Walker, one of the most respected criminologists in the country, and an expert on police tactics and procedures. Justice Scalia cites Walker in his opinion in Hudson, quoting him directly on page 12:

There have been “wide‐​ranging reforms in the education, training, and supervision of police officers.” S. Walker, Taiming the System: The Control of Discretion in Criminal Justice 1950 – 1990, p. 51 (1993).

Scalia preceded the Walker cite with this thesis sentence:

Another development over the past half‐​century that deters civil rights violations is the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal discipline.

Walker tells me he learned that Scalia had cited his work, “to my horror.”


Walker adds, “Scalia turned my research completely on its head. My point was that these reforms came about because the courts, specifically the Warren Court, forced the police to institute better procedures with judicial oversight. Scalia now wants to take that oversight away.”


Walker says political leadership, internal procedures, media oversight, and public pressure are all necessary to ensure civil liberties, but that judicial oversight is extremely important as well, and that Scalia misused his scholarship to imply that Walker supports a diminishing role for the courts.


Walker also says his research focused on conventional policing, not drug policing. The latter, he says, “is a special kind of policing,” and says he would agree that the direction of drug policing of late (which of course was what the Hudson case is all about) does raise significant civil liberties concerns. One might also note that Walker’s research for that particular book ended in 1990, sixteen years ago.