Bad Glacier

I sometimes amuse myself while reading by imagining what the judges would say if they didn’t have to worry about little things like the reputation of the judiciary and having respect for the parties. Here’s an example, from Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42:

Frank Chambers was convicted of two robberies, based partly on evidence the police found during a search of the car he was riding in. He challenged the admission of this evidence, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. After holding that the warrantless search of the car was constitutional because the police has probable cause, Justice White starts to feel bad for Chambers. Poor guy just had his appeal crushed. He probably feels real down-in-the-dumps right now. “Hey man,” White wants to say, “buck up. Things aren’t that bad. You just have to look on the bright side!” He then demonstrates. After stating that there’s no real difference between searching the car at the time of the arrest and driving it to the police station first, Justice White notes that the police were actually doing the owner a favor:

All occupants in the car were arrested in the dark parking lot in the middle of the night. A careful search at that point was impractical and perhaps not safe for the officers, and it would serve the owner’s convenience and the safety of his car to have the vehicle and the keys together at the station house.

“See, you don’t have to catch a ride back to your car now!” White doesn’t say. “Well, I guess that’s because you’re going to jail, but if you weren’t, you’d really be happy now. When I was young, we had to walk uphill through a blizzard to get back to our cars after we were convicted of robbery with evidence found during a warrantless search. You should thank the police for being so considerate.”

“Kids these days. They take everything for granted.”

“I concur,” says Justice Stewart. “It’s that ‘rock and roll’ music they’re all listening to nowadays. Turns their minds into mush. I miss The Big Bopper.”

Justice Harlan chimes in: “Stewart, you’re such a square. Not all rock music is the devil’s work. That Les Zeppelin fellow, for instance, is quite the guitar whiz. ‘Lots of people talk, but few of them know, the soul of a woman was created belooooww. . . Waaah-aaah, waaaahh-ahh [with the required air-guitar and Robert Plant hip-thrusting] . . .’”

“. . .” says Justice Blackmun, who took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.