Law and Legal Reasoning

Order Description For purposes of this assignment, imagine that you are the chief legal and policy counsel to the Governor of Missouri. Your governor has been reading up on these issues, too, and would like to advance a policy proposal on the following issue: • Reforming State Police practices in order to promote consistent police response to incidents, including in ways that reduce differential treatment of people by race; The governor wants you to prepare a 5-7 page memo for him/her on the issue you select. The governor asks that your memo does the following: • Provide a concise overview of the issue area (drawn from the materials in this course), as well as the particular dynamics of the issue area in your state (drawn from your own research); • Provide a summary of the relevant Supreme Court case law in the issue area, as well as any notable federal or state cases to pertain to the state about which you are writing; • Provide an analysis of what you believe are best-practice policies in the issue area, based on your own research (these may be policies in other states, federal policies, or policies in other countries; • Propose one policy in the issue area that you think should be pursued in the state about which you are writing. Your proposal should explain: o Why you think this policy would be effective, given the dynamics in your state; o How your policy connects to the case law you have discussed (for example, does your proposal go beyond what the law requires? Does it work within the parameters of existing case law? Does it draw on an idea in a judicial opinion or dissent?) o The potential upsides and downsides of the policy you propose (for example, the potential political reaction to it, financial impacts, implementation issues).