Here is a New York Times story about the exclusionary rule, a judge-made rule that requires the exclusion of relevant but unconstitutionally obtained evidence. The cost of the exclusionary rule is obvious: It can result in guilty people going free. The alleged benefit is that it deters wrongful conduct by police officers. (Officers, it is argued, have no reason to violate the Constitution if they know that any evidence they collect thereby will be excluded from the trial. I remember one of my fellow law students telling the professor that, as a former police officer, he never gave the slightest consideration to the exclusionary rule as we went about his work. Whether that is true of officers generally, I don't know.) The rule has been riddled with exceptions over the years. The Roberts Court may eliminate it altogether. I hope it does. Progressives will rant and rave about this, just as conservatives ranted and raved about the rule when it was created.
Law
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