On appeal from the decisions and orders of the district courts, members of the bar generally deal first with the “standard of review,” and one would expect, since appeals from motions to suppress have been with us some 90 years, there would be a consistent rule with respect to what is a most important issue.
Then a judge of the New York Court of Appeals, the legendary Benjamin Cardozo wrote a dissertation of this policy of the law in a book titled, “The Nature of the Judicial Process” (New Haven Yale Univ. Press 1921). Cardozo makes it crystal clear that consistency in the law is of major importance. He wrote: “judges are not permitted to make or unmake rules at their pleasure in accordance with changing views in expediency or reason.” He went on to note that the common law requires: “…consistency and certainty…” and that a court must seek “uniformity.”
