Monday, April 10, 2006

Bringing the Administration of Justice into Disrepute

I participate in an argument about the "exclusionary rule", i.e., whether it is a good idea to exclude probative but unconstitutionally-obtained evidence in criminal trials over at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Bottom line: exclusionary remedies are a bad idea, but the kind of people who are most against them wouldn't like the alternative, making personal injury lawyers rich suing cops.

One of these days I will tell the story of how current Chief Justice of Ontario Roy McMurtry came up with the current s. 24(2) in an attempt to keep exclusionary remedies exceptional, how Lamer CJC overruled this relatively obvious intention, and what it means for the idea of original intent in Canada. But, today, I got work to do.

Update: I know, I know. The politically correct term is "original understanding", not "original intent." I was just being pejorative.

Update 2: Got an e-mail from the literatus complaining about all the typos on this site. I just fixed one on this post, but don't think I'm going to make a habit of it. I will be better about using the spell check, but I am not getting paid, unless you count $0.11 Canadian from Google Ads. If you want typos fixed, post a bleeding comment, and I'll fix them.

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