Apparently, the government must be having problems proving the reliability of its dogs because it has now gotten the 9th Circuit to declare that the 4th Amendment doesn't apply when people cross the border. The government was using dogs to provide the requisite indicia of illegal activity but pushed to have the 4th entirely invalidated.
Y'know, I remember the courts having the ability to interpret the constitution but I just can't find the grant of authority to abrogate it.
5 comments:
I remember the courts having the ability to interpret the constitution but I just can't find the grant of authority to abrogate it."
Simple: Just claim that the Fourth Amendment is not justiciable, or that the original intent was that it only applied to freed slaves. That's how all the other provisions become "inkblots."
Thank goodness even the whackies in the 9th Circuit understand that the police need latitude to search at the border. Just remember, that's where the dirty bomb is coming in.
Nothing new here, anyway... the courts have long recognized that border searches do not implicate the 4th.
Tom, that's bull. Border searches do implicate the 4th Amendment. The government has, however, been given more latitude in that context.
I wish I worked in law enforcement. There are all sorts of rules and regulations that make my job more difficult that I would like to ignore.
"That searches made at the border, pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border, should, by now, require no extended demonstration."
United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 616 (1977)
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