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Craig Gibson

Tarmac delay rule

by Craig Gibson on 23 July 2010

Government as usual – heavy-handed and out of touch.

Experts say tarmac delays rule a mistake, but DOT disagrees

2010-07-23  »  Craig Gibson

Talkback x 7

1. Greg Krehbiel
   25 July 2010 @ 9:39 am

   link isn’t working. Is this the story?

   I think the tarmac rule is right, and I would go further. If the airline is going to imprison people on an airplane, they should pay the passengers for their time.

   I run into this from time to time on the MARC trains. We’ll get a few miles up the track, the engine will die (and so will the electricity and therefore the air conditioning) and we’ll be sitting in a sweltering train for a long time.

   Then if anybody tries to get off, they call the police to keep us imprisoned on the train. I’m not kidding. It’s absolutely outrageous.

2. Craig
   25 July 2010 @ 10:08 am

   The problem isn’t the rule per se. Everyone should be treated humanely, and people should not be unduly held up. The problem here, however, is that all flexibility is taken away. The majority of airline delays are caused by weather, the congestion in the Air Traffic Control system, or some combination thereof. There are only so many runways that can accommodate a certain number of takeoffs and landings per hour. This is particularly problematic in the Northeast and is only aggravated by weather.

3. DSM
   25 July 2010 @ 11:02 am

   The idea of paying people for their time in captivity is interesting.

   It reminds me of a discussion between Instapundit Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg last year about the exclusionary rule. Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy mentioned an old idea of his:

   I agree with Glenn that, when it comes to police misconduct, the exclusionary rule is better than nothing. And in my experience as a prosecutor in the late 70’s and early 80’s the exclusionary rule had a definitely salutary effect on police conduct. But I also agree with Jonah that it is fundamentally wrong to let free those against whom we have proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and also (as Glenn notes) that the exclusionary rule fails to protect those victims of police misconduct against whom no incriminating evidence was uncovered. There being no incriminating evidence to suppress, truly innocent victims of police misconduct have no effective remedy. I also do not think that holding individual officers personally liable for their misconduct is likely to be effective enough given the credibility contest between them and their accusers, coupled with the justified sympathy of the general public for the demands placed on police officers. But there is another alternative that neither Glenn nor Jonah consider.

   In my very first scholarly article as a professor–Resolving the Dilemma of the Exclusionary Rule: An Application of Restitutive Principles of Justice, 32 Emory Law Journal 937 (1983)–I proposed replacing the exclusionary rule with an administrative “court of claims” type system of monetary compensation to victims of police misconduct, whether the claimants are innocent or guilty of committing crimes. Most importantly, it would be police departments, and indirectly taxpayers, and not individual police officers who would be liable for making compensation. If the public wants the whatever increased security results from inadequately constrained police searches and seizures, it can pay for this by compensating the victims of this behavior. If it does not like paying compensation, it can use political mechanisms to impose greater constraints on police conduct. Ultimately, supervisors have a much greater influence on how officers behave than do judges disposing of some future prosecution.

   Thought it was clever then, and thinking about it again, it still seems clever to me.

4. Craig
   25 July 2010 @ 12:19 pm

   There is precedent to that approach, DSM. Akhil Reed Amar in his book “The Bill of Rights” conducts an analysis of the approach of the Founders to the Fourth Amendment, arguing that “not all warrantless searches are unconstitutional.” (Ch 4) The original role of juries was to hear claims by people who felt warrantless searches had been overly broad. If the jury agreed, the claimant was reimbursed.

   There has to be some mix of flexibility and accountability. We’ve lost that sense in our modern approach to government.

5. pentamom
   25 July 2010 @ 7:20 pm

   “There has to be some mix of flexibility and accountability. We’ve lost that sense in our modern approach to government.”

   In sooooo many ways. Government regulation of all kinds of health and consumer matters, for example, has gone from an attempt to disincentivize misconduct, to an attempt to prevent any and all bad outcomes via prior restraint. That just does not work.

6. GregK
   26 July 2010 @ 1:51 pm

   Government regulation of all kinds of health and consumer matters, for example, has gone from an attempt to disincentivize misconduct, to an attempt to prevent any and all bad outcomes via prior restraint. That just does not work.

   And people do the prohibited thing just out of pique.

7. ldeb
   2 August 2010 @ 7:15 pm

   Clearly railroad tracks and airline tarmacks are not designed to be safe places for people to disembark vehicles. Imprisoning people is clearly not the right answer to the problem. Federally mandated “perks” such as food, drinks, and perhaps future ticket discounts (for the inconvenience of the lack of air conditioning) would be a way to peaceably ask for people’s patience while acknowledging that they are being imposed upon. ISTM that money reimbursements will never be enough to keep people from feeling that they are, in fact, being imposed upon, when in fact they are.

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