Law Commons^™

Police Perceptions, Knowledge, And Performance: Traffic Stops And The Use Of K-9 Units, Christopher D. Totten, Gang Lee, Daniel Ozment

Catholic University Law Review

This empirical (survey) study of law enforcement officers aims to shed light on police conduct and knowledge concerning traffic stops, vehicle searches and the use of canine (K-9) units. This context is particularly relevant in light of a recent United States Supreme Court case in this area, Rodriguez v. United States, which held that when the mission of a routine traffic stop has been or reasonably should have been completed (i.e., the officer has issued a traffic ticket or a warning after having checked license, registration, insurance, and/ or warrants), the officer may not in general detain the vehicle …

Bitcoin Searches And Preserving The Third-Party Doctrine, Christine A. Cortez

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Government Intrusion: The Third-Party Doctrine In The 21st Century, Steven Arango

Catholic University Law Review

Technology may be created by humans, but we are dependent on it. Look around you: what technology is near you as you read this abstract? An iPhone? A laptop? Perhaps even an Amazon Echo. What do all these devices have in common? They store data in the cloud. And this data can contain some of our most sensitive information, such as business records or medical documents.

Even if you manage this cloud storage account, the government may be able to search your data without a warrant. Federal law provides little protection for cloud stored data. And the Fourth Amendment may …

Preview—United States V. Cooley: What Will Happen To The Thinnest Blue Line?, Jo J. Phippin

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Supreme Court of the United States ("Supreme Court") will hear oral arguments in this matter on Tuesday, March 23, 2021. This case presents the narrow issue of whether a tribal police officer has the authority to investigate and detain a non-Indian on a public right-of-way within a reservation for a suspected violation of state or federal law. The lower courts, holding that tribes have no such authority, granted James Cooley’s motion to suppress evidence. The Supreme Court must decide whether the lower courts erred in so deciding. While the issue before the Supreme Court is itself narrow, it has …

Rabbi Lamm, The Fifth Amendment, And Comparative Jewish Law, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Rabbi Norman Lamm’s 1956 article, “The Fifth Amendment and Its Equivalent in the Halakha,” provides important lessons for scholarship in both Jewish and American law. Sixty-five years after it was published, the article remains, in many ways, a model for interdisciplinary and comparative study of Jewish law, drawing upon sources in the Jewish legal tradition, American legal history, and modern psychology. In so doing, the article proves faithful to each discipline on its own terms, producing insights that illuminate all three disciplines while respecting the internal logic within each one. In addition to many other distinctions, since its initial publication, …

Surveillance And The Tyrant Test, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

How should society respond to police surveillance technologies? This question has been at the center of national debates around facial recog- nition, predictive policing, and digital tracking technologies. It is a debate that has divided activists, law enforcement officials, and academ- ics and will be a central question for years to come as police surveillance technology grows in scale and scope. Do you trust police to use the tech- nology without regulation? Do you ban surveillance technology as a manifestation of discriminatory carceral power that cannot be reformed? Can you regulate police surveillance with a combination of technocratic rules, policies, …

Facial Recognition And The Fourth Amendment, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Facial recognition offers a totalizing new surveillance power. Police now have the capability to monitor, track, and identify faces through networked surveillance cameras and datasets of billions of images. Whether identifying a particular suspect from a still photo, or identifying every person who walks past a digital camera, the privacy and security impacts of facial recognition are profound and troubling.

This Article explores the constitutional design problem at the heart of facial recognition surveillance systems. One might hope that the Fourth Amendment – designed to restrain police power and enacted to limit governmental overreach – would have something to say …

The Fourth Amendment’S Forgotten Free-Speech Dimensions, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

School “Safety” Measures Jump Constitutional Guardrails, Maryam Ahranjani

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and efforts to achieve racial justice through systemic reform, this Article argues that widespread “security” measures in public schools, including embedded law enforcement officers, jump constitutional guardrails. These measures must be rethought in light of their negative impact on all children and in favor of more effective—and constitutionally compliant—alternatives to promote school safety. The Black Lives Matter, #DefundthePolice, #abolishthepolice, and #DefundSchoolPolice movements shine a timely and bright spotlight on how the prisonization of public schools leads to the mistreatment of children, particularly children with disabilities, boys, Black and brown children, and low-income children. …

Homes, History, And Shadows: Select Criminal Law And Procedure Cases From The Supreme Court’S 2020-21 Term, Eve Brensike Primus, Lily Sawyer-Kaplan

Articles

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020 and the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace her solidified a 6-3 majority on the Court for Republican appointees and is already affecting how the Court approaches and decides its criminal law and procedure cases. Justice Ginsburg, a strong advocate for equality and fair treatment, generally construed criminal statutes narrowly and stressed the importance of defendants’ procedural rights. Justice Barrett is an originalist who will look to history to seek answers on the scope of criminal procedure amendments. The combined appointments of Justice Gorsuch and Justice Barrett mean …