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Courts and other forces have weakened Constitutional protections against police misconduct, and those guarantees meant to protect citizens from their government are likely to erode more over the next four years, predicted a noted Constitutional scholar.

"I am more afraid for my country and for the things that I believe in than at any other time of my life," said University of California Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, considered one of the country's top legal scholars.

Chemerinsky is also one of the lawyers who filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump recently, alleging Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits government officials from accepting titles, gifts, salaries and the like from foreign governments without the consent of Congress.

Chemerinsky was the keynote speaker at Friday's 21st Century Policing symposium sponsored by the University of Georgia School of Law and the Georgia Law Review.

In the late 1960s, the Kerner Commission, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, linked harsh, racially biased police tactics to the riots of the time. And 50 years later, police abuse remains rampant, with the victims disproportionately African Americans and other people of color, according to Chemerinsky.

Chemerinsky said mechanisms to rein in police misconduct, including the political process, the civil justice system and criminal prosecution, have not been effective. Political pressure leans in the direction of getting tough on crime, and courts have weakened citizens' ability to sue the government, including the police, he said.

U.S. Supreme Court decisions have also made it harder to hold police or prosecutors accountable when they break the law, according to Chemerinsky. Court rulings have also limited the ability of victims of police abuse to sue, he said.

Criminal prosecutions of police officers "rarely are brought and rarely are successful," Chemerinsky said, adding that judges won't stand up to prosecutors, and few police officers are willing to buck police culture and testify or report wrongdoing by fellow officers.

Federal investigations have led to reforms in some places, such as Los Angeles, but such investigations don't seem likely now, Chemerinsky said.

Instead, the curbs on police power and abuse are likely to further weaken, he said.

Chemerinsky noted a series of Supreme Court decisions that have weakened the "exclusionary rule" of law that says prosecutors can't use evidence that's illegally obtained. In some cases, evidence can now be used when it's illegally obtained, he said. "They know there's just not going to be any consequences for an illegal stop."

And given the likely composition of the Supreme Court as Trump's presidential term begins, "there could be five votes (a majority) to completely eliminate the exclusionary rule," Chemerinsky said.

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