Justice Scalia Case Analysis

Justice Scalia’s particular approach to constitutional interpretation—which relied on originalism and bright-line rules—prompted votes that can generally be seen as protective of the individual rights of criminal suspects and defendants, sometimes putting him at odds with a more traditional conservative judicial philosophy. While this applies to many areas, three in particular stand out: the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures in the context of criminal investigations; the Confrontation Clause right of criminal defendants at trial; and the rule of lenity derived from the Due Process Clause. Justice Scalia’s concern for the individual rights of defendants was displayed in the 2012 global positioning system

In one notable example, one year after Jones was decided, Justice Scalia applied this physical trespass test in Florida v. Jardines to invalidate the warrantless use of a drug-sniffing dog on the porch of a residence. Looking to common law rules of trespass and licenses, he observed that “an officer’s leave to gather information is sharply circumscribed when he steps off [the public] thoroughfares and enters the Fourth Amendment’s protected areas,” which, pursuant to the text of the Amendment, includes an individual’s “house.” Justice Scalia also ruled in favor of criminal defendants in several important Sixth Amendment lines of

New Jersey and author the 5-4 opinion in Blakely v. Washington, which generally hold that facts that increase the maximum punishment to which the defendant is subject must be determined beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury and not a judge. These rulings paved the way for Booker v. United States, which made the federal sentencing guidelines (open to choice synonym) discretionary, rather than mandatory. This has worked a profound shift in how criminal prosecutions operate on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, Justice Scalia can be seen to have sided with the defendants when the criminal law in question was found to have been written too vaguely to provide (adequate synonym) sufficient notice of the conduct the law