Professor Donald Tibbs spoke at a plenary session of the American Bar Association’s National Law-Related Education Conference at the National Constitution Center on Oct. 29.

Tibbs appeared as part of a plenary panel on Law Enforcement and Individual Rights in a Digital Age with constitutional scholar David Rudovsky of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and documentary filmmaker and attorney Spencer Wolff.

An expert on the overlapping subjects of race, civil rights and criminal procedure, Tibbs discussed the increasing role of technology in police-civilian interactions. Tibbs focused on the Fourth Amendment in the context of a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that police must obtain a warrant before installing a GPS tracking device on a suspected criminal’s vehicle.

Wolff presented portions of “STOP,” a documentary film he produced that examines “stop and frisk” practices followed by police in New York City, while Ramsey discussed police use of body cameras and Rudovsky explored the potential for civil rights advocates to use data collected by police to hold law enforcement officials accountable for their actions.

The conference provided high school social studies teachers with insights about legal and policy issues that would inform their own teaching.