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Originally Posted by speedrrracer
...Salinas should have been decided as such: "There is no amendment guaranteeing the state the right to use silence against the accused, and since this is a civil rights issue, the state must show a monumentally important reason why it needs this power which directly relates to the preservation of life / liberty...
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Why? Because it suits your notion of the way you'd like things to be? In other words, you think (1) that disputes should be decided by whim based upon a particular judge's personal belief about what is good or bad; and (2) that judge's ideas about what is good or bad will be the same as yours.
Fortunately, that is not how cases are decided. And although there can be disagreements about how certain legal principles might apply to a particular matter, at least judicial decisions are founded upon those principles.
So let's go back and look again at something I wrote not too long ago in post 52:
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Originally Posted by Frank Ettin
...it's not the role of the Court to decide if the result is good or bad. It's the job of the Court to apply the Constitution and applicable precedent to decide the case. If the result of applying the Constitution and precedent is unsatisfactory to you, you might consider how the law might need to be changed and take the opportunities provided by our system to bring about such change. However, changing the law is the province of legislatures, not the courts.
In fact, sometimes when precedent and the law as applied by a court don't achieve a satisfactory result, a legislature can change the law -- checks and balances at work. Recently there was the case of Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005). It was a ruling on a technical point of eminent domain law (specifically involving the "takings" clause of the Fifth Amendment applied to the States through the 14th Amendment and the meaning of "public use"). The result was found to be unsatisfactory by many. As a consequence, the legislatures of 42 States revised those States' eminent domain laws to avoid a Kelo result.
It would be within the powers of legislatures to by statute provide for a broader "right to remain silent." If there is enough political pressure for changing the rules of evidence to provide more protection for the individual than required by the Constitution, legislatures can do that.
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You apparently have certain ideas about how certain things should work. But in general you need to be looking to the legislatures to constitute matters the way you seem to want them to be. Most of the time people object to the way the system is working it seems to be primarily because they aren't getting what they want. But we live in a pluralistic Republic, and not everyone agrees that things ought to be the way you want them to be.
- Whenever a court makes a major decision that one disagrees with, the judicial system is broken and the judges corrupt. Whenever a court makes a major decision that one agrees with, the judges are great scholars (except any dissenters, who are corrupt), and our courts are the last bulwark against the machination of the political toadies bought and paid for by special interests.
- There has been, and probably always will be, a huge negative reaction by a large number of people to every important to the pubic Supreme Court decision. There are plenty of folks who loved Roe v. Wade and hated Heller, and perhaps as many who hated Roe v. Wade and loved Heller.
- Most of the time when folks call a decision of a court a bad decision, it isn't really because it didn't comport with the law and precedent. Most people tend to think a court decision is a bad decision because it did not achieve the result they wanted.
SCOTUS in
Salinas decided a dispute on the bases of established legal principles, the Constitution and precedent. That's how courts are supposed to decide things.
Legislatures on the other hand set public policy and decide things through a political process based on what enough of the body politic wants or will support, subject to certain constraints on the outer limits of their powers. The key to trying to achieve your vision is the political process, not the judicial process. So have at it and good luck.