Not if you're arguing that "children's rights," whatever those are supposed to be, trump Constitutional ones. There is no, "think of the children," exception to the limitations placed on government by the Bill of Rights.

There is indeed a broader 'common good' - these are sometimes seen in the exceptions, for example those in the First Amendment. And they are there for good reason. People can't just do whatever they want at any time.

'Rights of the Child' no, but rules in relation to obscenity why not?

I doubt there is truly anyone on here who would actually have seen this individual be let free to continue his abuse, causing untold misery and suicide (which have unfortunately been the outcome of the years of abuse by the church on children).

I'm not advocating law enforcement starts to purposely act unlawfully with an 'ends justifies the means' argument. If the guy had been standing there and refused a search without a warrant, so be it. But this was not the case.

so we won't eat fruit from a poisonous tree unless it is really, really tasty.

why not? to not be able to adapt the constitution when it leads to a mockery of justice as it would have done would be a worse outcome no?

No, I think the court argued, just as you did, that she had already seen enough during the permissible part of the search to call an LEO, so the fact the she did certain improper things subsequent to that point was irrelevant to the exclusion issue because they occured after enough evidence was obtained for probable cause.

yes, I think we should adapt the Constitution to yield whatever outcome we desire, when we desire it. (that IS what we do now in 4th Amendment cases, isn't it...let's be consistent)

while we're at it, I see nothing wrong with forced confessions either. There is no way any guilty person should ever go free. :confused:

So you're fine with tossing the Fourth Amendment to make sure of that?

The rationale of the prohibition against child pornography (with which I agree) has nothing to do with obscenity.

I would have. Let the police do real police work -- this guy would have slipped up. I'd rather see a murderer go free than allow the government to usurp powers that it is denied under the Constitution.

That's exactly what you're arguing.

No, and now we what is virtually a license for individual TSOs to look for whatever they want as long as it is in the course of the administrative search for WEI. Bad cases make bad law, and that's what has happened here.

There is no worse outcome allowing the government to usurp power that it is denied. As I said earlier, you don't seem to understand the Constitution.

The idea I love is that the court should be guided by expectations of public outrage. Seems like the Supreme Court ignored public outrage when it decided no limits could be put on business spending in politics. Or when OJ was freed after a criminal trial. I guess the European perspective is quite different. Our courts ignore public sentiment quite often. Not sure how right or wrong that is. Probably why a lot of judges are so hard to remove.

Taken from one perspective, the insistence of this clerk to keep looking and looking could be taken as evidence that we have an inspector who is a bit of a pervert. How many of us would admit to looking at naked child photos more than we were forced to?

I don't see that in this case and I'm curious why you do. As I see it, the court did two things. First, they said that the lower court should take another look at the question of whether sufficient evidence was found in the permissible part of the search to produce probable cause. I doubt anybody here has any problem with that part.

The only significant 4th Amendment determination here appears to be to eliminate the test of what was in the mind of the searcher who isn't violating the limits of a constitutionally-valid administrative search. I agree that's a "weakening", but I don't see how such a test could be applied. Since there's no external way to know what somebody was thinking, all that such a test does is suborn perjury. What do you see differently?

Ok - maybe my bad on the choice of the word 'outrage'. But of course courts are guided by public opinion. Liberal governments appoint liberal judges, and conservative governments appoint conservative ones.

decisions may change based on the make up of the court at the time.

To suggest that judges don't look for ways to achieve an outcome in line with their views would be naive.

If this had been for a less serious matter the court may well have either not touched it or come to a different decision.

Right. And that's clearly what happened in this case. But I think they tried hard to minimize the damage to the 4th Amendment in the process.

I'm not sure there is enough left of it for them to worry about that. the conception here is that the 4th exists so that people won't get searched to yield evidence against them. It's a lot broader than that. It exists so that people won't get searched AT ALL. sans probable cause they have something dangerous or illegal. that is, it is for you and me, AT THE AIRPORT among other locations. just coincidently, it stops criminals from getting convicted from illegal search.

I keep thinking that the unspoken premise of the courts is "forget your rights when you enter an airport". Apparently one successful bombing has created a "rights free zone" in America's airports. One foreigner here seems to believe that's no loss. But Americans are more used to the idea that they carry a shield against the state with them. Thanks to years of mistaken court appointments, the shield is now full of holes.

There's really no way to know that for sure one way or the other. The screener claimed that she needed to see more to "make sure" she knew what she was seeing. That implies (to me) that if she not looked further (reading the letters and such) she might not have felt that she had enough cause to call a LEO. If what she saw before satisfying the administrative search was a slam dunk, she had no reason to look further.

The reason I called the ruling flawed wasn't so much that it's a bad ruling (which it kind of is, but that's not the point) it's that it carries the appearance they they're ruling her sort of search potentially invalid, but allowed her specific search anyway. That's all debatable, given the paragraph above, but I certainly think it could be fodder for an appeal.