Is a tipster's word enough to justify a traffic stop?

In most states, police can stop a driver if a tipster says that person is intoxicated. A handful of states, though, require that the police must witness some kind of traffic violation themselves, first hand, before they can make the stop. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case from Virginia on this issue, though Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleague, Antonin Scalia, say they should've gotten involved. Roberts feels that Virginia and other states that have a higher standard are giving intoxicated drivers "one free swerve."

Comments

[aqua]

the Feds need to back away and let the states handle their state laws.

[Man in a Mission]

aqua - It appears that is exactly what happened.

However, I find it interesting that it was the [supposedly] states' rights advocates and 'strict constructionists' on the court that opposed respecting Virginia's right to legislate what is purely within that state's purview and prerogatives.

The [supposedly] liberal and 'big' government members of the Supreme Court opposed and prevented this attempted judicial activism and expansion of federal authority through usurpation of the states' authority.

[KC Cicero]

Who says Roberts is a conservative? About what? Certainly not about the rights of the individual -- only corporate citizens get his protection.

Scalia is right wing, but in a reasonably intellectually consistant way. Roberts is simply an apparachik of the corporate state.

[Sasquach]

The states are always within their authority when they permit greater protection of individual rights than is granted under the federal constitution. I don't like drunk driving, but I like this decision. It is inappropriate for the SCOTUS to attempt to decrease an expansion of personal liberty beyond federally mandated minimums.

[Man in a Mission]

KC Cicero - did you miss the [supposedly] qualifier regarding my reference to the political ideology of Roberts and Scalia?

That was placed there so that one would reasonably be able to understand that, in concert with the contrast to the positions taken by Ginsberg, Kennedy, Sotomayor, Stevens, & Breyer, et al., that I don't agree with the conventional labels where such labels are contradicted by actions.