“There is a law that allows the police, with probable cause that suggests a drug crime is taking place inside a residence but without a warrant, to knock on the door, and if they hear sounds of toilet flushing that suggest destruction of evidence, they can enter the house without a warrant.”
He then cites the Supreme Court case Kentucky vs King (link). I don’t dispute that Kentucky vs King allows the warrant-less entry in the situation above. Please refrain from discussing the ramification of Kentucky vs King and/or the drug war. My question is, is Kentucky vs King technically ‘a law’?
I have read that Supreme Court opinions become ‘part of common law’. My impression is that while common law embodies law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals, ‘a law’ is usually considered to be part of enacted law- a body of law adopted by legislative body. So, what say you, is a Supreme Court opinion considered ‘a law’?
It is an interpretation of a law, or more precisely, a constitutional amendment. When laws or amendments are applied to individual cases, they sometimes raise questions that are not answered by just reading the law. The Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of what laws and amendments mean. When they issue an opinion, it sets a precedent by which the law is enforced in the future.
I think it’s more along the lines of defining the ‘already on the books’ law. And that would seem to include wild and inventive defining. I don’t know if there is any limit to what they can define.
This may be a bit of a hijack, but I’m unsure if I’d call it “wild and inventive”; at least in the King matter that the OP refers to. A quick read-through of the actual decision linked in the OP indicates to me that definitions that the Court was using were consistent, and came from a number of precedents. But that was only a quick read-through, and I did not read the dissent. At any rate, if any of our American Legal Dopers would care to comment, I’d appreciate hearing what they have to say on this matter of “defining.”
For those who would like to read the actual Supreme Court decision in Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ____ (2011), it is in a PDF here.
It’s a law. Because the job of the Supreme Court is defining what the law means. So the law already existed before their ruling; they’re just saying what it meant. So in the case you mentioned, the law is the Fourth Amendment which prohibits unreasonable searches. What the Court did in Kentucky vs King was define a search based on hearing a toilet flush as not being an unreasonable search.
One important distinction though is the difference between a majority decision and a minority opinion. The Supreme Court only officially defines the law as a body - to have legal authority a decision has to be agreed on by a majority. Individual justices might disagree with the majority and their opinions may be included with the decision of the majority but they do not have binding legal authority.
This is called “case law”, I believe. A long time ago in England, there were very few statutes and judges made the law. Later on in England and then the US and other countries that inherited that legal system, statues were passed that defined certain laws, but the laws were subject to disagreement over their meaning or application. Courts read the law and determine what it means for a particular case.
Interestingly enough, I was reading case law in Virginia several years ago and it turns out that case law for the “Hit and Run” crime states that it is not applicable to locomotives. Apparently some hotshot DA decided to charge a train operator with hit and run for not stopping the train at the site of an accident. The court stepped in and said that that was an inappropriate use of the law.
An injunction (or similar court order) to enforce a supreme court opinion is more akin to “a law” in the common vernacular. The same goes for lower courts and state courts. Most people understand “a law” to be a specific statute. Caselaw is an interpretation of a statute (or a constitution, with respect to the operation of a statute). You can’t get in “trouble” for violating caselaw, you can for violating a court order.
For example, when the court issued Brown v. Board and held “seperate but equal” was unconstitutional, it was court orders, not the B v. B opinion itself, that implemented it requiring schools to desegregate.
Technically, it’s not a law, but it is law. Like this; The “law of the land” is defined as the Constitution, and statutes, treaties, etc., that are in accordance with it. While Congress or a state legislature can pass whatever they like as a statute law (subject of course to veto), only if that law is in accord with the Constitution does it become valid law. Anything they pass gets the presumption of constitutionality – the assumption is that legislators are not going to willfully violate the Constitution – subject to that presumption being rebutted by evidence that the statute in question violates the Constitution. That is judicial review, and it is incumbent on the courts generally, and SCOTUS in particular, by their assigned duty of applying the law of the land to a case or controversy brought before them.
Case law – how the Constitution interacts with statute law in particular cases, as defined by the courts in precedent-setting cases – is an integral part of what judges and lawyers mean by “the law.”
It’s also worth noting that no matter how carefully a statute (or the regulations it authorizes) is crafted, there will always be a case where it’s ambiguous or capable of being read two or more different ways. Again it’s the courts’ job to decide which way was intended – although the legislature can thereafter revise the law to make it clear – but that doesn’t solve the case before the court before they do it, so the courts need to do it as the cases come up.