Constitutional Policing

Michael A. Hardy, Esq., is a native New Yorker, born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn-New York. He is a graduate of New York Law School and currently serves as Executive Vice President and General Counsel to the National Action Network, Inc. (NAN). Mr. Hardy attended undergraduate school at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and completed his secondary school education at the Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts.  Mr. Hardy is admitted to the Bar of the State of New York; the Supreme Court of the United States, and each of the Federal District Courts within the State of New York.  Mr. Hardy is a founding member of NAN and has served as counsel to NAN and Rev. Al Sharpton for over 25 years. He cohosts with Rev. Sharpton NAN’s live weekly rally and radio broadcast that is heard on WLIB 1190 AM and broadcast nationally on the Impact TV Network. As NAN’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Mr. Hardy manages its day-to-day operational and legal affairs. He hosts a monthly free legal clinic at NAN’s House of Justice where community members can address basic legal questions with participating lawyers. “Legal Night” happens on the last Thursday of every month at the House of Justice.  Mr. Hardy has been in the forefront of key civil rights and police misconduct cases including the matters of Eric Garner, Noel Polanco, Sean Bell, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Fermin Arzu, Ousmane Zongo, and many others. He led the legal efforts for all of NAN’s major civil disobedience actions to date, highlighted by his representation of the approximately 1,200 persons who were arrested during the 1999 Amadou Diallo protests at One Police Plaza in New York City. In April 2014, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo appointed Mr. Hardy as a member of the Commission on Youth, Public Safety and Justice, which resulted in raising the age of criminal liability in New York from 16 to 18 years old. Mr. Hardy participated in the U.S. Department of Justice’s creation of the Clemency Project, where the Obama administration began an effort to release low-level drug offenders sentenced to life or near-life prison sentences under mandatory sentencing guidelines that would not be applicable today. In April 2022, Mr. Hardy was appointed to a special panel for the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority to review and make recommendations on issues of public safety, equity, and fare evasion.  Mr. Hardy’s primary areas of practice include civil rights litigation, criminal defense litigation, not-for-profit organizations, and employment matters. While in private practice he was lead counsel in several high-profile cases, such as the infamous mother/son murder trial of Santé and Kenny Kimes, upon which several books and television movies were based. He also had the distinct honor of arguing a matter before the late great U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In 1988, along with attorney John Zwerling of Alexandria, Virginia, he participated in one of the first cases to challenge the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretaps of American citizens, long before 9/11 when FISA became a household word. In 1986, he was a candidate for New York State Attorney General.  Mr. Hardy has written numerous editorials for several news publications and authored a series of editorials under the general title of “Equal Justice” for the Huffington Post. He co-authored a voting rights article for the Touro Law Review titled “Let All Voters Vote: Independents and the Expansion of Voting Rights in the United States,” 35 Touro L. Rev. 649 (2019). Prior to beginning his law practice, Mr. Hardy was one of the editors of the National Alliance newspaper, a national political weekly that focused on social justice, electoral, and democratic reform issues. His career has been profiled in the New York Times, New York Law Journal, and Village Voice, among others. He currently lives in New York. Mr. Hardy can be reached at hardy@nationalactionnetwork .net.

Table of Contents:




Part I: Foundations




1. Qualified Immunity, Wylie Stecklow

2. Administrative Complaints Against Police, Rita McNeil Danish

3. Accountability of Police as Public Employees, James Hanks

4. Constitutional Policing, Royce Russell




Part II: Effecting Positive Changes Toward a More Perfect Union




5. Contemporary Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, Sharon R. Fairley

6. Pattern or Practice Investigations and Consent Decrees, Michael A. Hardy

7. Litigating Police-Civilian Encounters, William Harmening

8. Transforming Policing: Lessons from New York City, Donna Lieberman




Afterword: The Most Perfect Union Protects and Serves Us All, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Index