You learn something new every day

I hate it when The New York Times uses terms without definition, as if anybody should automatically understand exactly what is meant. It’s pretty lazy, especially considering the fact that they often link to more information about terms, people, places, and events that are mentioned in their articles.

I was reading this article today, which speaks about the Supreme Court revisiting the exclusionary rule, which states that “evidence obtained by police misconduct cannot be used against a defendant.” That definition was provided by the Times. Anyway, The Court is recently ruled that not all types of police misconduct should automatically exclude the admission of evidence into legal proceedings.

I found the article to be fascinating, but I was a little confused by the phrase “Warren Court,” which was used several times through the article without any background information being given. I kind of knew that there had been a chief justice named Warren, but I didn’t know when that was or why it was significant to this particular issue. Enter Wikipedia. I know, I know. Librarians should not get their information from a web site that can be edited by anybody (at least for now), but I find it to be a good starting point, and if I really needed more in-depth information, I have tons of databases at my disposal. So anyway, according to Wikipedia, the Warren Court “represents a period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States that was marked by one of the starkest and most dramatic changes in judicial power and philosophy. Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court expanded civil rights, liberties, the judicial power, and the federal governmental power in ways previously unseen.”

The article also talked about the current and former compositions of the Supreme Court, and how the this ruling may signal a change in other exclusionary rule cases. For more information on the doings of the Supreme Court, you can visit SCOTUSblog.