Jaycee Dugard has filed suit against the U.S. government, alleging that the failure of law enforcement officers to adequately monitor her captor \u2013 a federal parolee \u2013 contributed to her nearly twenty-year confinement in a California backyard, during which time she endured multiple rapes.\u00a0 In doing so, Dugard challenges decades-old precedent maintaining that law enforcement officers have no constitutional duty to protect persons from harm.\u00a0 Does her case stand a chance?<\/p>\n
In the U.S., probably not.\u00a0 In DeShaney v. Winnebago County<\/a><\/em>, the Supreme Court held that the failure of social service workers to protect a child from his violent father did not breach any substantive constitutional duty.\u00a0 The child had no substantive constitutional right to police protection.<\/p>\n Sixteen years later, the Court extended its holding in DeShaney<\/em>, ruling that a police department\u2019s failure to enforce a protective order did not violate the procedural rights of the order\u2019s recipient.\u00a0 In Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales<\/a><\/em>, Jessica Gonzales tried desperately to get local police to find and arrest her estranged husband, who had violated a protective order by kidnapping their young children.\u00a0 Even though state law specified that officers \u201cshall\u2026enforce\u201d temporary restraining orders, police declined to pursue Gonzales\u2019s husband, who subsequently murdered the couple\u2019s three children.<\/p>\n The Court ruled that the restraining order\u2019s \u201cshall\u2026enforce\u201d language did not endow Gonzales with an entitlement to police protection.\u00a0 Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia stated, \u201cA well established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes.\u201d\u00a0 Gonzales\u2019s contention that \u201cmandatory\u201d meant \u201cmandatory\u201d was therefore unfounded.<\/p>\n Though Jaycee Dugard\u2019s lawsuit seems to be a long shot in the U.S., the Christian Science Monitor<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>points out that\u00a0international tribunals could be more sympathetic to Dugard\u2019s claims.\u00a0 Indeed, after Gonzales lost her Supreme Court case, she pursued a petition<\/a> with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, claiming that the U.S.\u2019s failure to more aggressively protect her and her children from domestic violence violated international norms of human rights.\u00a0 Last month, the Commission agreed<\/a>, labeling what happened to Gonzales a human rights violation.<\/p>\n The IACHR\u2019s decision calls into question American conceptions of fundamental rights, which have long eschewed affirmative entitlements to governmental aid.\u00a0 In the U.S., there is no federal obligation to fund abortions or other medical services (Harris v. McRae<\/a><\/em>) or provide adequate housing (Lindsey v. Normet<\/a><\/em>).\u00a0 Reasonable minds can disagree about whether the American system is a good thing; but the IACHR\u2019s opinion suggests that, at least in the eyes of the international community, it is a weird thing.\u00a0 Jaycee Dugard will likely not prevail in her suit against the U.S. government.\u00a0 But the question remains: are we okay with that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jaycee Dugard has filed suit against the U.S. government, alleging that the failure of law enforcement officers to adequately monitor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":3320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,44,49,41],"tags":[241,865,298,310,529,608],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amicus","category-courts","category-human-rights","category-sex-equality","tag-fourteenth-amendment","tag-human-rights","tag-inter-american-commission-on-human-rights","tag-jaycee-dugard","tag-substantive-due-process","tag-womens-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZrWS-Rp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3311"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}