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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (4700)	2/20/2003 8:46:52 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

I think abortion is one,. as has been pointed out. What I know best is the law, and there are numereous examples. For example, the Miranda decision. When that decision first came down, the police warned that it would make it almost impossible to convict many criminals. And for awhile the situation did get worse as the courts tossed out evidence under the exclusionary rule for the most trivial violations of the Miranda rule. But gradually the courts moved back, and now Miranda violations have to be meaningful to win acquittal. Another similar situation is the right to search without a warrant. The Warren court went, IMO, overboard in its decisions, tossing out evidence in cases, for example, where the police had what they thought was a good warrant but turned out to be defective. And tossing out evidence that was found in cars the police had stopped for traffic violations. But gradually the decisions calmed down, IMO, and the courts developed some doctrines that moved toward a middle ground, such as that evidence obtained under a warrant that was issued and used in good faith wasn't illegal because of a technical defect in the warrant. Or the search incident to arrest doctrine. The Warren court was clearly itself part of the pendulum. The police had gone overboard, and we were down a "slippery slope" on the side of hyperactive policing. Then the Warren Court stepped in and everybody worried about a slippery slope letting more and more criminals go. Now it's moving back the other way, and some people would say the Rehnquist court (and the Homeland Security Act) have set us back on a slippery slope of excessive police power. Back and forth it goes, with every shift of emphasis the opponents of that shift hollering that we're on a slippery slope to perdition, perdition of course being defined by whose ox is gored. The same sort of thing will happen soon -- is indeed starting to happen -- in the tort law situations. People have complained about the slippery slope that decisions like the McDonald's coffee decision are moving us in, that pretty soon you can get sued simply for saying hello to somebody. But that, too, will swing back. OSHA. Same thing. Oh, I could go on and on. But those are enough for now.