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Frank Sullivan, Jr., Professor of Practice and Indiana University Bicentennial Professor, will serve as an Adviser on the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law, Policing project. The American Law Institute is an independent organization of American lawyers, judges, and scholars that produces scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law.

The goal of the Policing project is to develop a set of principles in the area of policing that can serve as a guide to these entities, as well as to policing agencies themselves. The project aims to tackle some of the hardest questions where courts, legislatures, and police are most in need of guidance, including search and seizure, police encounters, use of force, evidence gathering, and police questioning.

Working through distinguished groups of lawyers and related professionals, the American Law Institute drafts model statutes, restatements of the law, and principles of law to guide legislatures, courts, and other governing bodies. Projects are drafted by a group of reporters, who are typically distinguished law professors with experience in the topics covered.

For Policing, Professor Barry Friedman, New York University School of Law is the Reporter and Professors Brandon Garrett, Duke University School of Law; Rachel A. Harmon, University of Virginia Law School; Tracey L. Meares, Yale Law School, and Christopher Slobogin, Vanderbilt University Law School, are the Associate Reporters.

As an Adviser, Professor Sullivan will work with the reporters, reading drafts and lending advice as the project makes its way from early drafts to final adoption.

Earlier this year, Indianapolis Mayor Joseph Hogsett, appointed Sullivan to the Indianapolis Civilian Police Merit Board and he currently serves as the elected president of the board, which has broad responsibility over the hiring, training, promotion, and discipline of members of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

“I am honored to be an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Policing project,” Sullivan said, “just as I am honored to serve as President of the Indianapolis Civilian Police Merit Board. Both of these responsibilities give me the opportunity to work on improving police-community relations which I believe to be the most important issue facing American cities today.”

Sullivan said that he expects to learn many things from the project that will be helpful to IMPD and that many IMPD initiatives will be of use to the project. “For example,” he said, “I have already provided information about IMPD’s Mobile Crisis Assistance Teams for inclusion in the section of the project on police interaction with vulnerable communities.” (Mobile Crisis Assistance Teams are first responders specially trained to handle people with mental health, behavioral, or substance abuse issues.)

Frank Sullivan, Jr., was appointed Professor of Practice at the law school in August, 2012, after 19 years of service as a Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court. In December, 2018, he was named an Indiana University Bicentennial Professor.