The Supreme Court’s Reasoning in Yesterday’s United States v. Jones Decision (about the Fourth Amendment) Illustrates the Kind of “Devil in the Details” Analysis that Is a Necessary Requirement for Meaningful Politics

© 2012 Peter Free


24 January 2012

 

 

There are two points to this essay —

 

They combine to conclude that intellectual clarity in politics is necessary to effectively protecting Liberty, or anything else important.

 

My initial observation, about freedom, uses yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones — No. 10-1259, slip opinion, 23 January 2012 — to demonstrate the importance of using the Fourth Amendment as a barrier against furthering the establishment of an American police state.

 

My second point, about the requirement for intellectual clarity, uses the Court’s reasoning in United States v. Jones to illustrate the necessity for thinking clearly about issues that affect our society.  In that, I’m expanding the topic that I began here, yesterday.

 

Read Jones, if you like the challenge of thinking clearly about the competing requirements of personal liberty versus social order.

 

 

The Supreme Court put a stop to one illegality that the expanding American police state likes to use to trample freedom in the name of social order

 

The United States v. Jones decision nixed Government’s idea that it can attach warrant-less GPS devices to “our” cars and use “our” movements against us in court.

 

The Court’s conclusion was unanimous (9-0).  The Justices “no-brainer” take on this issue indicates how far afield the FBI and District of Columbia Police Department were willing to go in trampling the Fourth Amendment in the name of drug suppression.  Government’s “destroy freedom in order to save it” (consequences-ignoring) mindset is a product of the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism.

 

Both of these poorly thought-out endeavors encouraged law enforcement’s increasing blindness to the core constitutional values that it is sworn to protect.

 

A sense of proportion is something that Big Government almost invariably gets wrong, with help from the overly fearful and rights-sacrificing witless among us.

 

 

United States v. Jones — what it was about

 

Factually, this is a simple case.

 

In 2005, the FBI and the District of Columbia’s Metro Police got a D.C. warrant to put a GPS tracking device on drug-suspect Jones’ car.  But they let the warrant expire, and then went over to (arguably) another legal jurisdiction (Maryland) to stick it on his Jeep.

 

Jones’ GPS-tracked movements led to his prosecution for drug-dealing.

 

The legal question boiled down to, “Can Government track people with warrantless GPS devices attached to their cars and still be in compliance with the Fourth Amendment’s proscription of unreasonable searches and seizures?”

 

No, said the Court.

 

 

All the Justices agreed that the Government had exceeded its bounds, but they took two different tracks to get to that conclusion —

 

This (agree but diverge in our thinking) aspect of the decision introduces my point about the importance of fact-based analytical thinking and the organizing primacy of knowing what we are ultimately trying to do.

 

The Jones decision was no-brainer, given existing case law on the subject.  But Justice Scalia’s majority opinion and the minority’s concurrence got to the freedom-upholding outcome via two different rationales.

 

The Court’s agreement regarding the Liberty-upholding outcome, combined with the justices’ individual differences in justifying it, illustrates three things:

 

(i) unanimous agreement that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, even in instances the Founders could not foresee;

 

(ii) the importance of the facts of each case in applying that ideal;

 

and

 

(iii) the reality that analytical frameworks differ in how they uphold even agreed-upon principles.

 

 

Even smart people get confused about complicated subjects, but they agree on the rules of rationally honest analysis

 

Thoughtfully rational people agree on at least two things:

 

(a) rational thinking is factually based,

 

and

 

(b) intellectual honesty requires explaining (i) why and (ii) how one gets to the conclusions one reaches.

 

Every prominent U.S. politician today ignores both requirements.

 

And the public lets them get away with it.  The reasoning in United States v. Jones, even with its internal disagreement, illustrates the opposite of politicians’ vacuum-filled blabber.

 

Jones’ factual base, as applied to its outcome, illustrates why a larger proportion of the American public needs to emulate the Court’s emphasis of facts and logic in thinking about political issues.

 

Our freedom and our economy are at stake.  Continuing on the empty sound-bite path isn’t going to get us anywhere good.

 

 

“So, Pete, what happened in Jones that illustrates the importance of intellectual honesty in national affairs?”

 

The Jones case illustrates how the core of some American principles are beyond dispute, even though we might differ on how to justify upholding them in specific factual circumstances.

 

The Court clearly was taken aback by the Government’s crass flaunting of established Fourth Amendment law.  Hence, their unanimity in rejecting Government’s actions.

 

The instructive portion of the decision, though, lies in the Justices’ disagreement about how to rationalize their rejection of the Government’s liberty-crushing justifications.  The Court’s internal disagreement illustrates two things:

 

(i) the Justices’ willingness to abide by the rules of rational thinking that I outlined above,

 

and

 

(ii) the fact that people can disagree about the mechanics of applied logic and still get to agreed-upon Primary Principles.

 

Justice Scalia’s majority opinion emphasized the physical nature of the common law trespass involved in attaching a GPS device to Jones’ car.  The minority concurrence emphasized the “expectation of privacy” aspect of the intrusion.  Though not obvious to non-constitutional attorneys, the difference between these two approaches is glaring (and may have future consequences).

 

Note

 

For lawyers, lawyer-wannabes, and logicians, Jones is an interesting case.

 

Both opinions go off Logic’s tracks.  The majority by arguably “under-proving” its trespass finding as that applies in the modern context, and the concurrence by inadvertently derailing its rationale (by stretching it too far) in the second half of its opinion.

 

The clash between the two competing perspectives illustrates how difficult it is to apply amorphous principles to factual situations.

 

The Court’s internal disagreement paradoxically illustrates my perennial point that facts and transparent reasoning are minimally necessary in reaching a just society.  If we are unwilling to lay out our premises and our conclusions in a clear and thorough way, how are we going to have an honest and useful debate about anything?

 

Jones reveals, by way of contrast, how thoughtless the non-judicial elements of our culture have become in their alleged “debates” regarding where this nation is and should be going.

 

As a political culture, we regularly abandon the rules of rational discussion.  And we assume that disagreements necessarily mean that agreement about Primary Principles cannot be reached.  Hence, for example, the stone-walling regularly done in Congress on all manner of trivial issues.

 

Jones (again by way of contrast) reveals how passionate bone-head-ism is our new political mean.

 

And the case substantiates my increasingly strongly held thought that the Judiciary is the only branch of government that still works (although in a discriminatory fashion), despite its excessive work load.

 

 

The moral? — Analytical honesty exposes irrational stupidity at every turn

 

There is no valid reason why our political leaders cannot be as intellectually honest (in their most important communications) as the Supreme Court’s justices are in theirs.

 

In troubled times, constructive leadership requires the ability, courage, and determination to lead.  Not the ability to mimic and pander to the herd.  Contrasting proportions of honesty set these two approaches apart.

 

That is the difference (for example) between President Abraham Lincoln and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on the one hand, and our current crop of American political leaders, on the other.

 

When people no longer hold themselves to the principles of rational discourse and evidentiary support, they abandon themselves to leadership by conniving charlatans.  Which is where we Americans are today.