Searching for direction: Courts,social science,and the adjudication of racial profiling claims

As an issue of contemporary legal and social concern, racial profiling has become part of the national discourse. As claims of racial profiling proliferate, courts are struggling to adjudicate them without sound social science research on law enforcement stop practices. This article reviews the methodological and analytical weaknesses inherent in most of the research on racial profiling and illustrates how these weaknesses have caused problems for courts in deciding racial profiling claims. It also presents a methodological strategy for curing many of the defects in previous racial profiling studies, thereby providing courts with a sound basis for deciding equal protection-based claims that often rely on statistical evidence.