Because the case comes to us from a decision of the Court of Appeals affirming the entry of a directed verdict for respondents, we take the evidence hereafter noted in the light most favorable to petitioner. § 1983, petitioner Dethorne Graham seeks to recover damages for injuries allegedly sustained when law enforcement officers used physical force against him during the course of an investigatory stop. We hold that such claims are properly analyzed under the Fourth Amendment's "objective reasonableness" standard, rather than under a substantive due process standard. This case requires us to decide what constitutional standard governs a free citizen's claim that law enforcement officials used excessive force in the course of making an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of his person. The Court’s doctrinal choice in Graham has contributed to the perpetuation of police excessive use of force in many communities of color.CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court. These findings suggest that the Supreme Court in Graham made a particular doctrinal choice in analyzing constitutional questions regarding police violence under the Fourth Amendment (which has an individualizing effect) instead of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and its potential to allow group-based and structural analysis-a move that did not reflect a preexisting trend or consensus in the federal courts. We find that prior to Graham, federal courts infrequently relied upon the Fourth Amendment in assessing police excessive force claims, a pattern that dramatically changed after the decision: only 28% of the pre- Graham cases include a discussion of the Fourth Amendment whereas 90.4% of the post- Graham cases do. In this Essay, we ask: What impact did this decision have on the nature of police excessive force claims in federal courts? To address this, we engaged in a qualitative examination of 500 federal cases (250 in the twenty-six years before Graham and 250 in the twenty-six years after) and coded for the types of claims brought by plaintiffs and recognized by federal courts. The Supreme Court not only refined an objective reasonableness test to describe the constitutional standard, but also held that the Fourth Amendment is the sole avenue for courts to adjudicate claims that police violated a person’s constitutional rights in using force. Connor established the modern constitutional landscape for police excessive force claims.
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