550
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
uing to engage in surreptitious interceptions," ante, at 531. It is the Court's reasoning, not the judgment of Congress and numerous States regarding the necessity of these laws, which disappoints.
The "quantum of empirical evidence needed to satisfy heightened judicial scrutiny of legislative judgments will vary up or down with the novelty and plausibility of the justification raised." Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 391 (2000). "[C]ourts must accord substantial deference to the predictive judgments of Congress." Turner Broadcasting, 512 U. S., at 665 (citing Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U. S. 94, 103 (1973)). This deference recognizes that, as an institution, Congress is far better equipped than the judiciary to evaluate the vast amounts of data bearing upon complex issues and that "[s]ound policymaking often requires legislators to forecast future events and to anticipate the likely impact of these events based on deductions and inferences for which complete empirical support may be unavailable." Turner Broadcasting, 512 U. S., at 665. Although we must nonetheless independently evaluate such congressional findings in performing our constitutional review, this "is not a license to reweigh the evidence de novo, or to replace Congress' factual predictions with our own." Id., at 666.
The "dry-up-the-market" theory, which posits that it is possible to deter an illegal act that is difficult to police by preventing the wrongdoer from enjoying the fruits of the crime, is neither novel nor implausible. It is a time-tested theory that undergirds numerous laws, such as the prohibition of the knowing possession of stolen goods. See 2 W. LaFave & A. Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 8.10(a), p. 422 (1986) ("Without such receivers, theft ceases to be profitable. It is obvious that the receiver must be a principal target of any society anxious to stamp out theft in its various forms"). We ourselves adopted the exclusionary
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