UVA Professor: Vague Traffic Laws Invite Discrimination

Kim Forde-Mazrui, a law professor at the University of Virginia, argues in the Vanderbilt Law Review that our state's legal system needs to be reformed to give constitutional protection to motorists.  He argues that vaguely written laws, like Virginia's traffic laws, "give police the authority to stop, interrogate, search, and arrest whomever they choose for any reason."

Specifically, Forde-Mazrui believes that police are targeting racial minorities and young motorists. 

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.  However, if police officers make an arrest, they are able to validly search the area within the immediate control of the motorist.  As long as the initial arrest is valid, a court reviewing the officer's actions will find that the search was also valid.

Forde-Mazrui's argument is that the discretion given to police officers during a traffic stop lead to a discriminatory application of the law.  For instance, an officer might be more likely to ticket a racial minority or young driver in a traffic stop than he would be to ticket a white, middle-class adult.  This discretion, he argues, dictates that minorities and young drivers are effectively limited to lower speeds than white, middle class adults, because the officer who might ticket not the middle class driver for exceeding the speed limit by 10 mph is likely to ticket the minority for exceeding it by only 5 mph.

To remedy this problem, Forde-Mazrui suggests limiting the authority of police officers by requiring them to justify enforcement practices that have a discriminatory impact, requiring higher enforcement rates, and precluding enforcement of minor traffic violations.

A full copy of Forde-Mazrui's article can be found here.