Legal Commentary

The Good Faith Exception for Changing Law: Recent Developments

By Orin Kerr

I?ve been running a series of posts about the good faith exception for changing law, and I wanted to flag three new developments just in the last week:

1. Today the Ninth Circuit denied DOJ?s petition for rehearing en banc in Gonzalez, the case rejecting the exception, so the clear circuit split stays: United States v. Gonzalez. (Judge Bea dissented, and I?ll respond to at least some of his arguments in a post later today.)

2. Last Thursday, the Eleventh Circuit joined the fray, agreeing with the Tenth Circuit that the good faith exception applies to changing law: United States v. Davis.

3. The Utah Supreme Court also joined in, agreeing that the good faith exception applies for changing law: State v. Baker.

I plan to continue to blog on this issue, and I may also put my thoughts together into an article. Stay tuned.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on March 16, 2010 (boomark / email).