On the other hand, I find much of the judicial process dubious at best. Judges decide many legal issues on the basis of matters of fact that should properly left to juries. Judges try to come up with standards for how long a cop must wait after knocking before breaking down the door in order to perform a 'reasonable' search, and declare that if a cop waits (or claims to have waited) the requisite amount of time the search is reasonable. Only through judicial vanity could the thousands of pages of Fourth-Amendment precedents be considered a better indication of what is allowable than the Constitution itself.
The first-line rule should be very simple: allow the defense to demand that the jury be informed of all the facts surrounding a search and the execution thereof, and that the jury be instructed that it should ignore any evidence that was obtained unreasonably. The jury should base its decision of reasonableness on common sense--not upon the thousands of pages of anti-Constitution driven which tries to justify unreasonable behavior.
Article VI, Clause 2 reveals that majority opinions aren’t equal to, or greater than 1) This Constitution; 2) the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; 3) all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States…. This fact is admitted by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the U.S. Courts: “The courts do not make the laws. That is the responsibility of Congress.”[1]
The difference between a law and a majority opinion is enormous. Majority opinions extend no further than between the parties to the case or controversy. Majority opinions are evidence of law, not law.[2] Law encompasses everyone under its jurisdiction. Therefore, “the authority of Supreme Court precedent is very weak indeed.”
Your comment is very similar to the one made by “the celebrated Montesquieu: ‘Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing.’ ‘Spirit of Laws.’ vol. i., page 186.”[3] So, your “IMHO” is so well substantiated that it is a self-evident truth, which should be common Constitutional sense possessed by every voter and government official.
[1] http://www.uscourts.gov/about.html
[2] http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=uvalwps Since the content of a judicial opinion was not seen as the equivalent of law but only as evidence of law’s application to a particular case, the practice of stare decisis was qualified: whatever presumption lay in favor of following established “case law” needed to be understood as capable of being overcome once that “case law” was determined to be demonstrably erroneous. http://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/subsites/gmulawreview/files/14-2/documents/SINCLAIR.pdf Yet judges were not infallible. Their decisions did not make law, forof mundane institutions, only a legislature could do that.82 Judicial decisions were evidence of law, authoritative, but not preemptive. “[I]ndeed these judicial decisions are the principal and most authoritative evidence, that can be given, of the existence of such custom as shall form a part of the common law.”83 Yet a subsequent judge could find that his predecessor had been mistaken, that in the precedent case the court had misperceived the moral blueprint in the sky. The prior decision was not “bad law, but . . . itwas not law. . . .”84 On the declaratory theory a court did not and could not absolutely bind its successors.85 BLACKSTONE, supra note 38 at *69 (“[I]n such cases the subsequent judges do not pretend to make a new law but to vindicate the old one from misrepresentation.”). See Swift v. Tyson, 41 U.S. 1(1842) (Story, J.): In the ordinary use of language it will hardly be contended that the decisions of courts constitute laws. They are, at most, only evidence of what the laws are, and are not, of themselves, laws. They are often re-examined, reversed, and qualified by the courts themselves, whenever they are found to be either defective, or ill-founded, or otherwise incorrect. Id. at *18.84 BLACKSTONE, supra note 38, at *70.85 Blackstone:Yet this rule [to abide by precedents] admits of exception, where the former determination is most evidently contrary to reason; much more if it be clearly contrary to the divine law. But even in such cases the subsequent judges do not pretend to make a new law, but to vindicatethe old one from misrepresentation. http://www.lonang.com/conlaw/4/c45.htm The role of the judge is to declare what law already exists. The standard legal maxim is, Jus dicere, et non jus dare. That is, the province of a judge is to declare the law, not to make it. [U.S. v. Butler.] case precedents are binding in moral force only, that is, as a matter of persuasion, not as a matter of obligation. Prior opinions are not to be followed if plainly absurd. Thus, judicial opinions are not "law," they are only evidence of it. http://www.lonang.com/foundation/3/f36b.htm Supreme Court Opinions Are Only Evidence of Law, Not Law Itself and Not the Supreme Law of the Land. http://org.law.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/articles/7_1_1.pdf Roe v. Wade: A Scandal Upon The Court. Part I: The Unsettling of Roe v. Wade Chief. Justice Mansfield, in the English case of Jones v. Randall (1774), observed: The law would be a strange science if it rested solely upon cases; and if after so large an increase of commerce, arts and circumstances accruing, we must go to the time of Rich. 1 (1189-1199) to find a case, and see what is law. Precedent indeed may serve to fix principles, which for certainty’s sake are not suffered to be shaken, whatever might be the weight of the principle, independent of precedent. But precedent, though it be evidence of law, is not law in itself, much less the whole of the law. Whatever is contrary, bonos mores est decorum [literally: whatever is against good manners (or customs)] and seemliness (or propriety) [freely: whatever is against public morals], the principles of our law prohibit, and the King’s Court as the general censor and guardian of the public manners, is bound to restrain and punish.60
[3] http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed78.htm The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.