Law Commons^™

Analog Analogies: Intel V. Hamidi And The Future Of Trespass To Chattels, Maureen E. Brady, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

A symposium on great torts cases of the twenty-first century must include Intel Corp. v. Hamidi, the canonical case about whether unwanted e-mail spam sent to a company’s server could give rise to a trespass to chattels claim. While much has been written about Intel, in this Essay, we argue that Intel is as much of a classic for what it reveals about the old-fashioned tort as it is for its more closely examined ruling on “cybertrespass.” The dueling personal property analogies chosen by the majority and dissenting opinions in Intel reveal basic and fundamental disagreements about what …

The Empty Promise Of The Fourth Amendment In The Family Regulation System, Anna Arons

Faculty Publications

Each year, state agents search the homes of hundreds of thousands of families across the United States under the auspices of the family regulation system. Through these searches—required elements of investigations into allegations of child maltreatment in virtually every jurisdiction—state agents invade the home, the most protected space in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Accordingly, federal courts agree that the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement applies to family regulation home searches. But almost universally, the abstract recognition of Fourth Amendment protections runs up against a concrete expectation on the ground that state actors should have easy and expansive access to families’ homes. Legislatures …

The Tesla Meets The Fourth Amendment, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Can police search a smart car’s computer without a warrant? Although the Supreme Court banned warrantless searches of cell phones incident to arrest in Riley v. California, the Court left the door open for warrantless searches under other exceptions to the warrant requirement. This is the first article to argue that the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception currently permits the police to warrantlessly dig into a vehicle’s computer system and extract vast amounts of cell phone data. Just as the police can rip open seats or slash tires to search for drugs under the automobile exception, the police can warrantlessly …

Thompson V. Clark And The “Reasonable” Policing Of Marginalized Families, Anna Arons

Faculty Publications

This Article uses the experience of Larry Thompson, the plaintiff in Thompson v. Clark, 142 S. Ct. 1332 (2022), to examine the absence of privacy for poor families, particularly poor Black, Latinx, and Native families, in the United States. Mr. Thompson may end up remembered in legal history as a victor, as the Supreme Court lowered the barriers to bringing malicious prosecution claims and reinstated Mr. Thompson’s own previously dismissed malicious prosecution claim. Yet before securing this victory, Mr. Thompson lost a slew of other Fourth Amendment claims against the police. Mr. Thompson’s claims arose from state agents’ warrantless …

How The Fourth Amendment Frustrates The Regulation Of Police Violence, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

Within policing, few legal principles are more widely known or highly esteemed than the “objective reasonableness” standard that regulates police uses of force. The Fourth Amendment, it is argued, is not only the facet of constitutional law that governs police violence, it sets out the only standard that state lawmakers, police commanders, and officers should recognize. Any other regulation of police violence is inappropriate and unnecessary. Ironically, though, the Constitution does not actually regulate the use of force. It regulates seizures. Some uses of force are seizures. This Article explains that a surprising number of others—including some police shootings—are not. …

Presumed Punishable: Sentencing On The Streets And The Need To Protect Black Lives Through A Reinvigoration Of The Presumption Of Innocence, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Following the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, there has been a renewed focus on protecting Black people in America from excessive police violence. While the images of George Floyd were shocking to the public, that level of extreme violence and disregard for life has been a common aspect of the lives of Black Americans throughout history. In America, Black people are "pre­sumed punishable." Due to the historical and persistent biases against Black people, Black people find themselves subject to false assumptions about their criminality and presumptions that they are deserving of punishment. This stands …

The Fourth Amendment At Home, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

A refuge, a domain of personal privacy, and the seat of familial life, the home holds a special place in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Supreme Court opinions are replete with statements affirming the special status of the home. Fourth Amendment text places special emphasis on securing protections for the home in addition to persons, papers, and effects against unwarranted government intrusion. Beyond the Fourth Amendment, the home has a unique place within constitutional structure. The home receives privacy protections in addition to sheltering other constitutional values protected by the Due Process Clause and the First Amendment. For example, under the Due …

The Supreme Court And The Illegitimacy Of Lawless Fourth Amendment Policing, Ayesha B. Hardaway

Faculty Publications

For more than half a century, documented police brutality has affected communities of color and the American legal system has largely failed to address it. Beginning with Rizzo v. Goode, Supreme Court decisions have allowed local police departments nearly unlimited discretion in their policies and practices. That decision and others demonstrate that the Supreme Court is misaligned with governmental initiated reforms. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which allows the U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to investigate law enforcement agencies’ practices and seek injunctive relief against agencies found to have engaged …

Fourth Amendment Textualism, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “unreasonable searches” is one of the most storied constitutional commands Yet after decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence, a coherent definition of the term “search” remains surprisingly elusive Even the justices know they have a problem Recent opinions only halfheartedly apply the controlling “reasonable expectation of privacy” test and its wildly unpopular cousin, “third-party doctrine,” with a few justices in open revolt.

These fissures hint at the Court’s openness to a new approach Unfortunately, no viable alternatives appear on the horizon The justices themselves offer little in the way of a replacement And scholars’ proposals exhibit …

Reevaluating School Searches Following School-To-Prison Pipeline Reforms, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court held in New Jersey v. T.L.O. that school officials could search students without a warrant and with only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, because of schools’ need for discipline and the relationship between educators and students. That case belongs to a body of Fourth Amendment cases involving, in T.L.O.’s terms, “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement.” What Fourth Amendment standard, then, governs searches involving one of the roughly 20,000 school resource officers (SROs) in American schools? Most state courts to decide the issue ruled in the 1990s and 2000s that T.L.O. applied to SRO-involved …

Orwell's 1984 And A Fourth Amendment Cybersurveillance Nonintrusion Test, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article describes a cybersurveillance nonintrusion test under the Fourth Amendment that is grounded in evolving customary law to replace the reasonable expectation of privacy test formulated in Katz v. United States. To illustrate how customary law norms are shaping modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, this Article examines the recurrence of judicial references to George Orwell’s novel, 1984, within the Fourth Amendment context when federal courts have assessed the constitutionality of modern surveillance methods. The Supreme Court has indicated that the Fourth Amendment privacy doctrine must now evolve to impose meaningful limitations on the intrusiveness of new surveillance technologies. …

A Tactical Fourth Amendment, Brandon L. Garrett, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

What rules regulate when police can kill? As ongoing public controversy over high-profile police killings drives home, the civil, criminal, and administrative rules governing police use of force all remain deeply contested. Members of the public may assume that police rules and procedures provide detailed direction for when officers can use deadly force. However, many agencies train officers to respond to threats according to a force “continuum” that does not provide hardedged rules for when or how police can use force or deadly force. Nor, as recent cases have illustrated, does a criminal prosecution under state law readily lend itself …

Keep Out! The Efficacy Of Trespass, Nuisance And Privacy Torts As Applied To Drones, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

The drone industry is burgeoning and there is boundless excitement over the potential civil and commercial applications of these aerial observers. Drones are also fun recreational toys that have more capabilities than their predecessor - the remote controlled helicopter. But along with the benefits comes the potential for misuse. More and more frequently concerned spectators are reporting drones flying around the windows of homes, backyards, and at beaches and sporting events. In some places people are even shooting them down.

We have entered a new frontier of aerial observation with the unmanned aircraft. As is often the case with new …

Carpenter Privacy Case Vexes Justices, While Tech Giant Microsoft Battles Government In Second U.S. Supreme Court Privacy Case With International Implications, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

Fall 2017 saw a major privacy case with international implications reach the U.S. Supreme Court this term, Carpenter v. United States. Now a second such case pits the Government against Big Tech in United States v. Microsoft. Carpenter is a criminal case involving federal seizure of cell phone location data from service providers. Arising under the “reasonable grounds” provision of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the case accentuates Americans’ lack of constitutional protection for personal data in third-party hands, in contrast with emerging global privacy norms. The second major privacy case headed for Supreme Court decision in 2018 also arises …

The Positive Law Model Of The Fourth Amendment, William Baude, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

For fifty years, courts have used a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard to define “searches” under the Fourth Amendment. As others have recognized, that doctrine is subjective, unpredictable, and conceptually confused, but viable alternatives have been slow to emerge. This Article supplies one.

We argue that Fourth Amendment protection should be anchored in background positive law. The touchstone of the search-and-seizure analysis should be whether government officials have done something forbidden to private parties. It is those actions that should be subjected to Fourth Amendment reasonableness review and the presumptive requirement to obtain a warrant. In short, Fourth Amendment protection …

The Post-Riley Search Warrant: Search Protocols And Particularity In Cell Phone Searches, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Last year, in Riley v. California, the Supreme Court required police to procure a warrant before searching a cell phone. Unfortunately, the Court’s assumption that requiring search warrants would be “simple” and very protective of privacy was overly optimistic. This article reviews lower court decisions in the year since Riley and finds that the search warrant requirement is far less protective than expected. Rather than restricting search warrants to the narrow evidence being sought, some magistrates have issued expansive warrants authorizing a search of the entire contents of the phone with no restrictions whatsoever. Other courts have authorized searches …

Flagrant Police Abuse: Why Black Lives (Also) Matter To The Fourth Amendment, Joelle A. Moreno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Right To Remain Armed, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

The laws governing gun possession are changing rapidly. In the past two years, federal courts have wielded a revitalized Second Amendment to invalidate longstanding gun carrying restrictions in Chicago, the District of Columbia, and throughout California. Invoking similar Second Amendment themes, legislators across the country have steadily deregulated public gun carrying, preempting municipal gun control ordinances in cities like Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Cleveland.

These changes to substantive gun laws reverberate through the constitutional criminal procedure framework. By making it lawful for citizens to carry guns even in crowded urban areas, enhanced Second Amendment rights trigger Fourth Amendment protections that could …

Rights, Remedies, And The Quantum And Burden Of Proof, Joelle A. Moreno

Faculty Publications

It is tempting to commemorate the 2014 centenary of the exclusionary rule by celebrating our historically progressive role in constitutional rights protection, but those familiar with the facts know that Fourth Amendment violations persist unabated. As New Yorkers consider Judge Scheindlin’s damning assessment of police stop-and-frisk practices, and the country erupts in protests following fatal police encounters, are legal scholars who continue to pontificate on constitutional bona fides addressing “real” Fourth Amendment questions?

Traditional academic abstraction and artificial doctrinal divides obscure the fact that rights and remedies are defined by their operation. Constitutional rights have no value if, after they …

The Pond Betwixt: Differences In The U.S.-Eu Data Protection/Safe Harbor Negotiation, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the differing perspectives that animate US and EU conceptions of privacy in the context of data protection. It begins by briefly reviewing the two continental approaches to data protection and then explains how the two approaches arise in a context of disparate cultural traditions with respect to the role of law in society. In light of those disparities, Underpinning contemporary data protection regulation is the normative value that both US and EU societies place on personal privacy. Both cultures attribute modern privacy to the famous Warren-Brandeis article in 1890, outlining a "right to be let alone." But …

The Death Penalty On The Streets: What The Eighth Amendment Can Teach About Regulating Police Use Of Force, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The use of force by police officers has traditionally been analyzed through the lens of Fourth Amendment reasonableness. The Supreme Court has decided that the proper question regarding the excessiveness of police force is whether the police officer acted as a reasonable law enforcement officer. When that police force is fatal — what this Article deems the death penalty on the streets — the legal question is the same, leaving us with an analysis that requires a heavy reliance on the officer's version of events and a host of disagreement on what constitutes appropriate police action. Reasonable minds can, …

The Inverse Relationship Between The Constitutionality And Effectiveness Of New York City "Stop And Frisk", Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

New York City sits at the epicenter of an extraordinary criminal justice phenomenon. While employing aggressive policing tactics, such as “stop and frisk,” on an unprecedented scale, the City dramatically reduced both violent crime and incarceration – with the connections between these developments (if any) hotly disputed. Further clouding the picture, in August 2013, a federal district court ruled the City’s heavy reliance on “stop and frisk” unconstitutional. Popular and academic commentary generally highlights isolated pieces of this complex story, constructing an incomplete vision of the lessons to be drawn from the New York experience. This Article brings together all …

Future Of The Fourth Amendment: The Problem With Privacy, Poverty And Policing, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

For decades, the reasonable expectation of privacy has been the primary standard by which courts have determined whether a "search" has occurred within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court's recent decision in U.S. v. Jones, however, has reinvigorated the physical trespass doctrine's importance when determining whether there has been a "search" triggering constitutional protection. Recognizing the unpredictability of the reasonable expectation of privacy doctrine and that doctrine's bias against the urban poor, many scholars hope that the Jones opinion may ameliorate the class divide that has developed in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

This Article argues that while …

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

For several years, states have grappled with the problem of cyberbullying and its sometimes devastating effects. Because cyberbullying often occurs between students, most states have understandably looked to schools to help address the problem. To that end, schools in forty-six states have the authority to intervene when students engage in cyberbullying. This solution seems all to the good unless a close examination of the cyberbullying laws and their implications is made. This Article explores some of the problematic implications of the cyberbullying laws. More specifically, it focuses on how the cyberbullying laws allow schools unprecedented surveillance authority over students. This …

Policing Facts, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court’s understanding of police practices plays a significant role in the development of the constitutional rules that regulate officer conduct. As it approaches the questions of whether to engage in constitutional regulation and what form of regulation to adopt, the Court discusses the environment in which officers act, describes specific police practices, and explains what motivates officers. Yet the majority of the Court’s factual assertions are made entirely without support or citation, raising concerns about whether the Court is acting based on a complete and accurate perception. When it comes to policing facts, the Court too …

Why Arizona V. Gant Is The Wrong Solution To The Warrantless Cell Phone Search Problem, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The New American Privacy, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

Conventional wisdom paints U.S. and European approaches to privacy at irreconcilable odds. But that portrayal overlooks a more nuanced reality of privacy in American law. The free speech imperative of U.S. constitutional law since the civil rights movement shows signs of tarnish. And in areas of law that have escaped constitutionalization, such as fair-use copyright and the freedom of information, developing personality norms resemble European-style balancing. Recent academic and political initiatives on privacy in the United States emphasize subject control and contextual analysis, reflecting popular thinking not so different after all from that which animates Europe’s 1995 directive and 2012 …

Eyes In The Sky: Constitutional And Regulatory Approaches To Domestic Drone Deployment, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

This article begins with a current look at the deployment of drones domestically, both in terms of their use and the procedure for attaining approval for flight. Part II examines the capabilities of drones. Part III considers the Supreme Court's current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and its application to law enforcement's use of drones. Part IV reviews existing and proposed federal and state regulation of drones. Part V offers constitutional and legislative prescriptions for regulating drones.

'Lonesome Road': Driving Without The Fourth Amendment, Lewis R. Katz

Faculty Publications

American states and municipalities have so many minor traffic regulations that every time a driver gets behind the wheel of a car he or she is likely to commit multiple violations. The violation of any traffic regulation empowers police officers to stop the vehicle, ticket and, in some states, arrest the motorist. Police are physically unable to stop and ticket, let alone arrest, every motorist committing a traffic violation. Instead, police are vested with unlimited discretion when choosing which motorists to stop, warn, ticket, or arrest. So long as there is probable cause for a traffic violation, courts will not …

Texting While Driving Meets The Fourth Amendment: Deterring Both Texting And Warrantless Cell Phone Searches, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Recent laws criminalizing texting while driving are under-inclusive, ambiguous, and impose light punishments that are unlikely to deter. At the same time, the laws empower police to conduct warrantless searches of drivers’ cell phones. Texting while driving is dangerous and should be punished with stiff fines, possible jail time, license suspensions, and interlock devices that prevent use of phones while driving. However, more severe punishment will not eliminate police authority to conduct warrantless cell phone searches. This Article therefore proposes that legislatures allow drivers to immediately confess to texting while driving in exchange for avoiding a search of their phones. …