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Judges: Time to distinguish between the smell of burnt and raw marijuana.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) How many judges have experience smoking marijuana, smelling others who have smoked marijuana, and smelling raw marijuana? At least one judge has such experience. Soon after the Senate bounced Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan nominated a then-forty-one-year-old Douglas Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. His nomination went up in smoke within days after his admission that he had smoked marijuana while a law school professor. He has remained all this time on the D.C. Circuit. Certainly, marijuana smoking should not disqualify one from the bench; nor should marijuana be illegal in the first place.  Whether or not it is a virtue for a judge to have had no direct experience with marijuana outside the courtroom, certainly judges should not be relying on other members of the bench to create judicial notice that marijuana smell provides sufficient probable cause for a search...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on January 05, 2009 (boomark / email).