Tulane Law Review Honors Professor Rachel Kincaid for Groundbreaking Article on Police Training and the Use of Force

Rachel Kincaid, Associate Professor of Law, has received the Tulane Law Review’s John Minor Wisdom Award for Academic Excellence in Legal Scholarship, given annually to the author whose article, following nomination and a vote of the Senior Editorial Board, is deemed to have made the most significant contribution to legal scholarship in the current volume, for her article, “Excited Delirium” Training Encourages Law Enforcement Violence, 99 Tul. L. Rev. 49 (2025).

Professor Kincaid’s article critically examines the legitimacy of “excited delirium,”  a discredited pseudoscientific concept still used in law enforcement training, which can be abused to rationalize aggressive policing. She shows how this term pathologizes normal responses to fear and distress, leading to unnecessary force and deadly encounters. Her article calls for an end to this harmful training and advocates for legislative action to eliminate it from policing practices.

Professor Kincaid recently took a deep dive into her scholarship in an in-depth interview on the Public Defenseless with Hunter Parnell Podcast. You can hear her interview here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yFQgGBOMJdbZW08slt5lF.