Opinion ID: 2179687
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Rights Require Remedies

Text: The issue on appeal relates to very specific language in the Delaware Constitution: no warrant to search any place ... shall issue ... unless there be probable cause supported by oath or affirmation. [90] In this case, the absence of probable cause is not an issue. Instead, the real dispute between the majority and the minority turns on whether the Delaware Constitution provides a remedy when items are seized pursuant to a search warrant that was issued without probable cause. That question is not an issue of first impression. Fifty years ago, in Rickards, this Court held that a violation of the Delaware Constitution's right not to be searched pursuant to a warrant that was issued without probable cause required a constitutional remedy  exclusion of the illegally seized items from evidence at trial. [91] The majority has concluded that Rickards was correctly decided and has applied that venerable construction of the Delaware Constitution to this case. The minority concludes that when there is a good faith violation of the probable cause requirement in Delaware's Constitution, there is no constitutional remedy. Blackstone's Commentaries were cited by Chief Justice John Marshall several times in support of the proposition that the law must furnish a remedy for the violation of a vested legal right. [92] Almost two centuries ago, in Marbury v. Madison , Chief Justice Marshall, relying on Blackstone's Commentaries, eloquently stated: The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right. [93] In our system of dual sovereignty, the government of Delaware is also a government of laws. Without a constitutional remedy, a Delaware constitutional right is an oxymoron that could unravel the entire fabric of protections in Delaware's two hundred and twenty-five year old Declaration of Rights.