Courts make broad policy from single cases that seldom represent all affected situations.

Evidence

Courts announce broad policy—for example, the inadmissibility of illegally seized evidence—in the course of deciding specific cases. This poses no difficulty if the case is representative of all the situations the court’s ruling will affect. According to Horowitz, this rarely happens; courts make policy without information about many situations their policy will affect, and the result of such ill-informed policymaking is likely to be bad policy. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2854

Categorization

• DEFINE: The exclusionary rule example illustrates how a narrow case can generate broad doctrine.
• XREF: Links to Mapp v. Ohio and the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule doctrine in the course.