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Georgia’s conservative Supreme Court: Compelled breathanalyzer tests violate state privilege against self-incrimination

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Who saw this coming? A “conservative” court making a ruling based on the constitution. Georgia’s court is not packed with liberal, “let the criminals run free” judges.

This is the “killer” paragraph that judges everywhere need to read, learn and embrace:

We interpret a constitutional provision according to the original public meaning of its text, which is simply shorthand for the meaning the people understood a provision to have at the time they enacted it. This is not a new idea. Indeed, there are few principles of Georgia law more venerable than the fundamental principle that a constitutional provision means today what it meant at the time that it was enacted. “[T]he Constitution, like every other instrument made by men, is to be construed in the sense in which it was understood by the makers of it at the time when they made it. To deny this is to insist that a fraud shall be perpetrated upon those makers or upon some of them.”

A victory for freedom. Read more here.