Indiana Supreme Court rules the "Castle Doctrine" is a thing of the past!

Last May the Indiana Supreme Court surprised constitutionalists and patriots the nation over by calling the “castle doctrine” — that is, the age-old view that a man's home is his castle, his place to defend from all unauthorized invasions — a thing of the past.

The newly minted Justice Steven David, writing for himself, Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard and Justice Frank Sullivan, decreed the following to be Indiana law (over the dissent of justices Robert Rucker and Brent Dickson):

“We believe, however, that a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. … Nowadays, an aggrieved arrestee has means available at common law for the redress against unlawful police action.”

Please note that the Royalist “we” above is limited to 60 percent of the Indiana Supreme Court in 2011. Three contemporary men in black have taken it upon themselves to roll back almost 800 years of common law. Thus the hubris that is post-modernity is on full display in Indianapolis.

On Tuesday, this same court reaffirmed its May ruling, allegedly “clarifying” (i.e., in a manner likely to pacify the politicos getting grief from their constituents) that their decision visits no harm upon the Fourth Amendment. (Rightly understood, that is — which really means Leftly understood, of course.)

The Indiana Supreme Court now assures us that even though it uprooted common law established by Magna Carta in 1215, the court did not intend to encroach upon the Bill of Rights hammered out some 560 years after that seemingly optional social compact. And lacking the intent to encroach, must not have encroached, right?

Wrong. The garden of legal precedent cannot be so neatly weeded. Ripping out one “weed” always leads to a fraying of the roots of the flowers in the general vicinity. Our esteemed court's “new and improved” angle on changing medieval common law by using a sentence beginning with “nowadays” will soon metastasize, taking down the Orwellian memory hole much more than just the castle doctrine.

http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110922/EDITORIAL/309229977