This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 10th, 2016. I'm Caleb Brown.

20 years ago today, the Supreme Court decided Wren, the United States.

In that case, the court found that police can stop you for pretty much any

articulable moving violation.

The result has been profiling of all kinds, particularly racial profiling. Jonathan Blanks, managing editor of police misconduct.net,

describes how that profiling harms police legitimacy.

What did this Wren case decide the 20 years ago this month?

What did that case establish?

Wren clarified the Supreme Court's position that so long as there was an articulable reason to pull a driver over that any stop

was permissible.

So if a police officer decides that someone in a Camry looks suspicious in a neighborhood,

they can follow that person and wait until they break

one of the myriad traffic laws

and pull them over to further investigate.

Okay, so this is your tail lights out,

you rolled through that stop sign,

you were swerving in and out of lanes, you did something improper that is a moving violation.

Absolutely.

Any of those can be a reason, a legitimate reason to stop a motorist.

Absolutely and then from that point the police officers go to various extent to try and

search the vehicle for contraband, be it guns, drugs, weapons.

Mind if I look in the trunk.

...