Handsome Rhodes Scholar George Will in WaPo:
But Arizona's statute is not presumptively unconstitutional merely because it says that police officers are required to try to make "a reasonable attempt" to determine the status of a person "where reasonable suspicion exists" that the person is here illegally. The fact that the meaning of "reasonable" will not be obvious in many contexts does not make the law obviously too vague to stand.
Hmm...
The Bill of Rights -- the Fourth Amendment -- proscribes "unreasonable searches and seizures." What "reasonable" means in practice is still being refined by case law -- as is that amendment's stipulation that no warrants shall be issued "but upon probable cause." There has also been careful case-by-case refinement of the familiar and indispensable concept of "reasonable suspicion."
What?
That's pretty obtuse, it's supremely obtuse for someone as sharp as George Will.
The fourth amendment proscribes unreasonable searches and seizures, and it does so by requiring cops to have probable cause, or get a judge to sign a warrant, but no such requirement exists under the Arizona law.
Will suggests that Arizona's use of "reasonable" is just like the 4th Amendment's use of "unreasonable," except the entire definition of "unreasonable" vis-à-vis the 4th Amendment (i.e. "unreasonable" presumes the existence of a search warrant) is totally absent in the Arizona law.
I play a sport just like baseball except it's on ice and there's a puck and you can fight.
He also doesn't mention this provision of the law, even though he links to it:
Allow lawsuits against local or state government agencies that have policies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws. Would impose daily civil fines of $1,000-$5,000. There is pending follow-up legislation to halve the minimum to $500.
People, anyone in the state of Arizona, can sue government agencies if those agencies "have policies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws."
Whatever the hell that means.
So we have a law with a muddy definition of who can be reasonably searched, no definition of "reasonably" and no judicial oversight leading up to said searching.
Also, any moron can sue the cops if the former feels the latter didn't sufficiently shake-down all the busboys at Outback Steakhouse.
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