This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 17th, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Supreme Court yesterday handed down a ruling that further erodes the so-called

Castle Doctrine, that your home is your castle and that the police need a warrant

to enter it. Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice, comments.

The Supreme Court issued a very important ruling concerning the power of the police to

conduct searches.

And I think it's important because one of the key differences

between a free society and societies that are not free

concerns the power of the police.

In some countries, the police can search wherever they want and arrest whoever they want

whenever they choose but in the United States the power of the police is limited by the Constitution.

And they are not allowed to arrest and search whenever they want to.

The primary check on the power of the police is our warrant application process.

If the police cannot usually act on their own, but if they go to a judge and apply for

an arrest warrant or search warrant, they explain to the judge the reasons why they want to

enter a home or arrest a person. If the judge agrees that they've conducted a

good investigation have good reasons for wanting to do this, then he'll approve the warrant and the

search or arrests can take place. If he thinks that the investigation is shoddy and

they're just acting on gossip or just some hunch he's going to reject the

application in which case they are either

going to drop the investigation or they have to continue gather more information and

then reapply with their warrant application to the judge and hope that he approves it the second time.

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