Yesterday's Supreme Court decision in Virginia v. Moore upheld the use of evidence seized during arrests that are illegal under state law. So now the whole "4th Amendment is Dead" choir is harmonizing again, this time about how police can now illegally arrest and search anyone anytime. But it ain't like that, not yet. My analysis is available here.

I hate a bad search and seizure ruling as much as anyone, but I'm also the associate director of Flex Your Rights, where we teach people how to exercise their rights during police encounters. That mission is challenging enough without well-meaning Bill of Rights enthusiasts issuing hyperbolic eulogies for the 4th Amendment every 3-6 months.

We face grave threats to our civil liberties, but ranking high among them is the fact that most of us don't have a clue what these rights are to begin with. Exaggerating the practical impact of bad rulings and legislation may feel like a strategy to get the public's attention, but it's not. That language merely serves to convince people that the battle is already lost and not worth fighting. It also exacerbates the widespread and tragic tendency of the majority of citizens to waive their constitutional rights whenever police ask them to.

That's why we defend constitutional rights by teaching people to assert them, instead of running around pronouncing to our friends and neighbors that they have no rights.

NY Times article shedding more attention to our out-of-control criminal justice system. However, the interesting sidenote to this article is the number of experts who apparently claim that our punitiveness has been succesful in reducing violent crime. Their perspective is begging the question, though, whether incarceration prevents violent crime solely in the sense of specific deterrence while incarcerated, or on the overall -- viz. does it reduce recidivism? does it cause more violent crime among future generations (by incarcerating their Fathers, for example)? Choice Excerpt:

"People who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences. The United States is, for instance, the only advanced country that incarcerates people for minor property crimes like passing bad checks, Mr. Whitman wrote. Efforts to combat illegal drugs play a major role in explaining long prison sentences in the United States as well. In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000. Those figures have drawn contempt from European critics. “The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism,” said Ms. Stern of King’s College.