POLS 4720 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Antonin Scalia, Pickup Truck, Judicial Restraint
5 May 2018
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The cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court must almost, by their very nature, be of heightened
controversy and significance in order to reach the nation’s highest legal forum, and Navarette v.
California (2014) is no exception. In brief terms, the Court in this case is asked to address the
question of whether the Fourth Amendment requires a police officer who receives a tip
concerning a reckless driver to corroborate the reckless driving before stopping the vehicle (Brief
of Petitioner at 8). With mountains of precedent supporting both sides of the argument as well as
a Court that is often equally divided along liberal-conservative lines, it can be difficult to predict
which side the Court will take. What is often easier to predict, however, is the direction in which
an individual justice will rule, particularly when that justice has been consistent in his or her
rulings during their tenure on the Court, such as Justice Antonin Scalia. Regarded as one of the
most conservative members of the Court, Scalia has been a steadfast supporter of judicial
restraint in his general approach to the duties of the Court as an institution, resulting in a
consistent pattern of conservative voting. However, in regards to Fourth Amendment cases,
Scalia is frequently in agreement with some of the more liberal justices on the Court. In light of
his method of constitutional interpretation and his record in similar past cases, Justice Scalia, in
the aforementioned case, will rule in favor of Navarette, requiring officers to corroborate the
information received in a tip before stopping a vehicle.
In August 2008, a Humboldt County dispatch center received an anonymous tip that a
silver pickup truck had run an unidentified vehicle off the road on Highway 1 (Brief of Petitioner
at 2). The caller provided the license plate number of the truck in question as well as the exact
location the incident occurred, and the information was relayed to the Mendocino County
dispatch center (Brief of Respondent at 1-2). Officers in the area were alerted, and two separate
officers soon reported seeing the vehicle and began to follow it (Brief of Respondent at 2).
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Document Summary
The cases heard by the u. s. supreme court must almost, by their very nature, be of heightened controversy and significance in order to reach the nation s highest legal forum, and navarette v. With mountains of precedent supporting both sides of the argument as well as a court that is often equally divided along liberal-conservative lines, it can be difficult to predict which side the court will take. Scalia is frequently in agreement with some of the more liberal justices on the court. In august 2008, a humboldt county dispatch center received an anonymous tip that a silver pickup truck had run an unidentified vehicle off the road on highway 1 (brief of petitioner at 2). The caller provided the license plate number of the truck in question as well as the exact location the incident occurred, and the information was relayed to the mendocino county dispatch center (brief of respondent at 1-2).
