Vanderbilt University Law School Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 1999 Why Liberals Should Chuck the Exclusionary Rule Christopher Slobogin Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Christopher Slobogin, Why Liberals Should Chuck the Exclusionary Rule, 1999 University of Illinois Law Review. 363 (1999) Available at: http://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/298 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WHY LIBERALS SHOULD CHUCK THE EXCLUSIONARY RULE Christopher Slobogin* In this article, Professor Christopher Slobogin makes a com- pelling new case against the exclusionary rule, from a "liberal"per- spective. Moving beyond the inconclusive empirical data on the efficacy of the rule, he uses behavioraland motivational theory to demonstrate why the rule is structurally unable to deter individual police officers from performing most unconstitutionalsearches and seizures. He also argues, contrary to liberal dogma, that the rule is poor at promoting Fourth Amendment values at the systemic, de- partmental level. Finally, ProfessorSlobogin contends that the rule stultifies liberal interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, in large part because of judicial heuristics that grow out of constant expo- sure to litigants with dirty hands. He also explains why noninstru- mental justificationsfor the rule, even when viewed from a liberal bias, fail to support a broad policy of exclusion.