About a month ago, I started a long post on Arizona v. Gant, a Fourth Amendment case argued yesterday involving the search incident to arrest power. I never finished the post, in part because I wasn't sure if the Court would see Gant as easy error correction under Thornton or an opportunity for Justice Scalia to pick up his pro-defendant Thornton concurrence and run with it. If it turned out to be the former, then the case wasn't worth the time. Based on the fascinating oral argument transcript from yesterday, however, it looks like the latter may be the case.

  There's a lot going on in Gant, and I can't do it justice here: I have to catch a train out of town shortly for the Jewish holiday. But I did want to flag the transcript and suggest it's worth a read: You don't often see the Supreme Court consider overruling a precedent to expand constitutional protection by replacing a bright-line rule with a standard. (Please note: If you are a fan of the popular meme of "our Supreme Court is filled with conservative activists who want to take away our rights," you may want to avoid this case to minimize uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.) Anyway, I hope to blog more about it in the future.