St. John's Law Review Volume 53 Number 1 Volume 53, Fall 1978, Number 1 Article 2 Implied Consent in Intoxication Tests: A Flawed Concept Penn Lerblance Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/lawreview This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in St. John's Law Review by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. IMPLIED CONSENT TO INTOXICATION TESTS: A FLAWED CONCEPT PENN LERBLANCE* INTRODUCTION First adopted in the 1950's in response to the critical problem of the intoxicated driver,I implied-consent statutes2 currently are in force in all fifty states.3 The central feature of these statutes, that a * Associate Professor of Law, California Western School of Law; B.A., Oklahoma City University; J.D., University of Oklahoma School of Law. I See, e.g., New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Motor Vehicle Problems, 3 N.Y. LEG. Doc. No. 25, 176th N.Y. Leg., 11 (1953). See generally Cramton, The Problem of the Drinking Driver, 54 A.B.A.J. 995 (1968); Little, Who is the Deadly Drinking Driver?, 59 J. CRIM. L. C. & P.S. 619 (1968); Comment, The DrinkingDriver: An Approach to Solving a Problem of UnderestimatedSeverity, 14 VILL. L. REV. 97 (1968). 2 New York was the first state to adopt an implied-consent statute. See Ch. 854, [1953] N.Y. Laws 1876 (current version at N.Y.