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124 Colum. L. Rev. Forum 1 (2024)

handle is hein.journals/sidbarc124 and id is 1 raw text is: COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW FORUM VOL. 124 JANUARY 29, 2024 PAGES 1-25 1983 Brandon Hasbrouck* This Piece embraces a fictional narrative to illustrate deep flaws in our legal system. It borrows its basic structure and afew choice lines from George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Like Orwell's novel, it is set in the not-too-distant future to comment on problems already emerging in the present. The footnotes largely provide examples of some of those problems and how courts have treated them in a consti- tutional law context. The title (itself quite close to Orwell's own title) is a reference to our chief civil rights statute, while the story deals with a critical threat to that statute. While qualified immunity has long served to prevent recovery for abuses by government employees such as law enforcement, it would be unnecessary if the courts simply refused to acknowledge that the Constitution granted protection against those abuses in the first place. And so, imagine a world where the Constitution's rights guarantees extended only so far as the most cynical originalist would say they do. It might not be too far from our own. * Associate Professor of Law and Director, Frances Lewis Law Center, Washington and Lee University School of Law. With apologies to George Orwell, whose classic novel is significantly more optimistic than this Piece. With love for Derrick Bell, whose work The Space Traders remains the gold standard for legal academic fiction. Derrick Bell, The Space Traders, in Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism 158 (1992). I want to thank Deborah Archer, Devon Carbado, Scott Chamberlain, Daniel Harawa, Jilliann Hasbrouck, Alexis Hoag, Alex Klein, Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, Vincent Southerland, and Julie Suk for their inspiration, guidance, and feedback. Thanks are also due to participants in the legal theory workshop at Fordham University School of Law and participants in the colloquium on race and inequality at New York University School of Law. I am grateful for the extraordinary support of the Frances Lewis Law Center at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. So much love to the amazing editors at the Columbia Law Review-specifically Godard Solomon-for superb editing and thoughtful comments that significantly advanced this Piece. For my daughters. Black Lives Matter. 1

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