Comment by p-e-w
9 hours ago
Why? What is the rationale? Unless of course you subscribe to the idea that anything goes as long as a court decrees it, in which case there’s nothing to debate really.
9 hours ago
Why? What is the rationale? Unless of course you subscribe to the idea that anything goes as long as a court decrees it, in which case there’s nothing to debate really.
Court approved warrants are pretty fundamental to how our legal system works and how some level of accountability is maintained. That system isn't perfect by any stretch, but removing it unlocks Pandoras box and I'm not sure we'd be better off without it.
As it stands, a cop has to get a warrant to enter and search your home, for example. If we remove that hurdle because we also don't trust the courts then we just have more searches.
I get the reaction to turn on the whole system, I have very little faith in it myself. But I don't think many people are really aware of or ready for what would come without it.
Have you been paying attention to the news lately where Trump is weaponizing the court system to a point where ethical AGs are resigning instead of complying?
Thats not an argument to get rid of the courts. Quite the opposite. Trump is trying to sideline them, but ultimately it will fail becausethe population wont accept it. The US isnt China or Russia, and Trump may have to learn that.
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That's how courts work. They have superuser access.
A court order is just a hurdle that legislation (or a constitutional provision) dicatates, in the investigation of crime (or prevention of future crime...). The distinction is the rights of the individual vs the rights of other individuals in the dilute sense we call society.
The problem is that individuals no longer have confidence in their institutions, for both good reasons (official corruption, motivated prosecutors, the dissolution of norms of executive behaviour) and bad ones (propaganda on Fox News, and the long tail of disinformation online).
The question becomes: how can citizens have confidence their rights will be protected? What structure would protect the right to privacy?
The only reliable way to protect rights is to limit power, and the only reliable way to protect fundamental rights is to limit power with absolute prohibitions.
This was well understood in the decades following WW2, and many countries implemented protections of this kind, only to roll them back again later when people had forgotten why they existed, and believed once more that everything will be fine as long as the “right” actors were in power.
Im a little confused. Do you not believe there should be courts at all?
What I don’t believe is that courts should have the power to force anything to happen just by signing a piece of paper.
Thank you for sharing this fact. Warrants can be had for almost any situation with creative phrasing from who is asking for it.
Warrants are so easy to obtain and so abused it is required that we all do something differently.
1 reply →
So how should it work?
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