Why courts should not quantify probable cause

The Political Heart of Criminal Procedure: Essays on Themes of William J. Stuntz

Volumn , Issue , 2011, Pages 131-143

  Kerr, Orin ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84928854192     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139094603.010     Document Type: Chapter

References (17)

1. U.S. Const. Amend. IV. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176 (1949).
2. Illinois v. Gates 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983).
3. Safford Unified School Dist. No. 1 v. Redding 129 S. Ct. 2633, 2639 (2010)
4. quoting Carroll v. United States, 167 U.S. 132, 262 (1925).
5. Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 371 (2003).
6. In one study, 166 federal judges were asked to quantify probable cause. Their answers ranged from 10 percent certainty to 90 percent certainty, with an average of 44.52 percent certainty. C. M. A. McCauliff, Burdens of Proof: Degrees of Belief, Quanta of Evidence, or Constitutional Guarantees?, 35 Vand. L. Rev. 1293, 1327-1328 (1982).
7. Christopher Slobogin, Let's Not Bury Terry: A Call for Rejuvenation of the Proportionality Principle, 72 St. John's L. Rev. 1053, 1082-1085 (1998), estimating probable cause at about 50 percent. 438 U.S. 154 (1978).
8. Whitlock v. Brown, 596 F.3d 406, 411 (7th Cir. 2010).
9. Available at http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2636.
10. This is a variation on the well-known “blue bus” hypothetical. Laurence H. Tribe, Trial by Mathematics: Precision and Ritual in the Legal Process, 84 Harv. L. Rev. 1329, 1372 (1971).
11. Karl Llewellyn referred to “situation sense” as a learned judicial intuition about accepted practices that allows judges to reach consistent results absent formal rules.
12. Karl Llewellyn, The Common Law Tradition: Deciding Appeals 268-285 (1960).
13. Sherry F. Colb, Probabilities in Probable Cause and Beyond: Statistical Versus Concrete Harms, 73 Law & Contemp. Probs. 69 (2010).
14. generally Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, Judgment Under Uncertainty:Heuristics and Biases, 185 Science 1124, 1128-1130 (1974).
15. generally Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, On Prediction and Judgment, Oregon Research Institute Bulletin 12 (4) (1972).
16. Maya Bar-Hillel, The Base Rate Fallacy in Probability Judgements, 44 Acta Psychologica 211, 220 (1980). supra note 13.
17. Scott Plous, The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making 146 (1993).