Could this country be making its way out of the wilderness on civil liberties issues? This week's Supreme Court ruling limiting vehicle searches gives me hope.

For years, cops have gotten away with searching cars when pulling people over for something as simple as a speeding stop. It's the whole reason we need tools like the ACLU bust card and the Flex Your Rights! video.

The new Supreme Court decision doesn't completely change that -- I'm sure people will still needlessly consent to warrantless searches. But what it does do is say it's not ok to search someone's car just because you've arrested them.

The case was brought by a guy named Rodney Gant, who was arrested for driving with a suspended license. He was handcuffed and nowhere near his car (and thus obviously not in danger of pulling out a hidden weapon or anything) when it was searched. They found cocaine in his jacket pocket and he ended up serving time for cocaine possession.

The court's response was essentially, "Wait a minute, these searches are supposed to keep officers safe or keep a suspect from destroying evidence pertaining to the arrest." Searches that don't fit this description are -- gasp -- a violation of our Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

What's especially interesting here is that the Supreme Court majority which overturned Gant's conviction was made up of liberal (Ginsberg, Souter) AND conservative (Scalia, Thomas) justices. I can't see the decision having come down this way in the "civil liberties be damned, save us from ourselves and each other" fear-driven political climate of, say, five years ago.

I'm not going to get too excited yet, though. The court just heard another Fourth Amendment case on whether it's ok for school administrators to strip-search students to check for drugs -- Ben wrote a D'Alliance post about it a couple days ago. Our brains tend to short-circuit when someone says, "Think of the children!" So if the court upholds the Constitution on that one, I'll really be cheering.