>Er... go easy on the patriotism, mate. We have those.
Despite your snarky tone, you are mistaken. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14935867
Despite your snarky tone, you are mistaken. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14935867
There are surely other ways to enforce the relevant rights and procedures.
Without the exclusionary rule, you rely on the authorities following restrictions purely out of the goodness of their hearts, or only as much as the voters of the day demand. What incentive would the prosecutors and police have to limit their own authority? You can't have the fox guarding the hen house.
How can this be true? "Only" is a strong word. And there are functioning judicial systems elsewhere that have different evidentiary rules.
I agree that there should be external incentives to obey rules and procedures, but there have to be other incentives out there. Why can't sanctions against individuals and organizations work just as well, for instance?
The exclusionary principle is remarkably indirect, if incentives for law enforcement officials is the primary reason for the principle.
Because the judicial branch doesn't play an active role in regulating and managing the executive branch. They can only address specific cases and controversies that have been brought before them. And if the legislature doesn't enact penalties for police overstepping their bounds, then the courts can do nothing to punish them. They can only issue orders to halt a specific ongoing violation. This is a hard requirement of the US Constitution[1], and the other common law systems around the world function the same way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_or_Controversy_Clause
What concerns me is that there seems to be a resignation to a false dichotomy between partially informed jurors and abusive trials. I'm not convinced that there isn't a better option out there. Especially since the U.S. is somewhat unique in its application of the idea.
In the UK, these rights are merely statutory and exist at the discretion of Parliament (the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty). If Parliament does not create an adequate enforcement mechanism, then that is its will and the legally legitimate outcome.
The rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, however, do not exist at the discretion of Congress. The courts will not allow the Fourth Amendment to become inoperative because Congress and the President fail to enforce it. On the other hand, Congress can and does create statutory rights through legislation, and is free to create as vigorous or as weak an enforcement mechanism for them as it wishes.
> The courts will not allow the Fourth Amendment to become inoperative because Congress and the President fail to enforce it.
Again, this is a false choice. Other countries make sure prevailing law is enforced without the exclusionary principle.
And other amendments are enforced without compromising the pursuit of truth in the courtroom. There are no enforcement mechanisms for the first amendment in the Constitution, but it gets enforced.
"In every other country (UK), it’s up to the trial judge to decide whether police misconduct has risen to the level of requiring the exclusion of evidence."
I would regard these as features rather than bugs.
Overall though the UK is better than the US. You only have to watch a couple of episodes of John Oliver to know that!