High Court Rules Government is Free to Invade Your Home - U.S. Constitution Viewed as Liberal Document
Well, the Daddy Party wins another one. No longer do police officers have to bother knocking on your door, or announcing themselves.Thanks to the Bush Supreme Court, your government can just walk right in. And I hope they walk right in on a few Congressmen from the Daddy Party.
It was a 5-4 decision.
With Sandra Day O'Connor gone, what did we expect?
Today the Fourth Amendment, tomorrow the First. What was that Bush said about the Constitution? It's only a piece of paper.
NY Times:
The Supreme Court yesterday substantially diminished Americans' right to privacy in their own homes. The rule that police officers must "knock and announce" themselves before entering a private home is a venerable one, and a well-established part of Fourth Amendment law. But President Bush's two recent Supreme Court appointments have now provided the votes for a 5-4 decision eviscerating this rule.
This decision should offend anyone, liberal or conservative, who worries about the privacy rights of ordinary Americans.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, argued that even if police officers did not have to fear losing a case if they disobeyed the knock-and-announce rule, the subjects of improper searches could still bring civil lawsuits to challenge them. But as the dissenters rightly pointed out, there is little chance that such suits would keep the police in line. Justice Scalia was also far too dismissive of the important privacy rights at stake, which he essentially reduced to "the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes." Justice Stephen Breyer noted in dissent that even a century ago the court recognized that when the police barge into a house unannounced, it is an assault on "the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life."
If Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had stayed on the court, this case might well have come out the other way. For those who worry that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will take the court in a radically conservative direction, it is sobering how easily the majority tossed aside a principle that traces back to 13th-century Britain, and a legal doctrine that dates to 1914, to let the government invade people's homes.
Thanks Samuel Alito and John Roberts. You are everything we thought you would be.
4th Amendment Scalia Bush Constitution SOTUS Supreme Court Privacy Rights Republicans Alito John Roberts Sandra Day O'Connor
