Law Commons^™

Warranted Exclusion: A Case For A Fourth Amendment Built On The Right To Exclude, Mailyn Fidler

Law Faculty Scholarship

Searches intrude; fundamentally, they infringe on a right to exclude. So that right should form the basis of Fourth Amendment protections. Current Fourth Amendment doctrine-the reasonable expectation of privacy teststruggles with conceptual clarity and predictability. The Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade casts further doubt on the reception of other privacy-based approaches with this Court. But the replacement approach that several Justices on the Court favor, what I call the "maximalist" property approach, risks troublingly narrow results. This Article provides a new alternative: Fourth Amendment protection should be anchored in a flexible concept derived from property law-what …

The End Of Intuition-Based High-Crime Areas, Ben Grunwald, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. Despite the importance of the decision, the Court provided no guidance about what that standard means, and over fifteen years later, we still have no idea how police officers understand and apply it in practice. This Article conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining data on over two million investigative stops conducted by the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012.

Our results suggest …

Resisting Wholesale Electronic Invasion Of The Fourth Amendment, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In The Absence Of Scrutiny: Narratives Of Probable Cause, Mitu Gulati, Jack Knight, David F. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

This Article reports on a set of roughly thirty interviews with federal magistrate judges. The focus of the interviews was the impact of the Supreme Court case, United States v. Leon, on the behavior of magistrate judges. Leon, famously, put in place the "good faith" exception for faulty warrants that were obtained by the officers in good faith. The insertion of this exception diminished significantly the incentive for defendants to challenge problematic warrant grants. That effect, in turn, could have diminished the incentive for magistrate judge scrutiny of the warrants at the front end of the process. We do not …

A Unified Theory For Seizures Of The Person, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

Perhaps there is something about the final stages of their careers that causes people to resolve conflicts by reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable. Albert Einstein spent the last days of his career searching for a unified field theory that would eliminate the contradictory laws governing relativity and quantum mechanics. Stephen Hawking has taken up this quest which has been renamed a search for the Theory of Everything. On a “slightly” more modest level, I find the later stages of my career drawing me toward formulating a unified theory governing seizures of the person. The challenge is to blend three different tests …

Searching Secrets, Nita A. Farahany

Faculty Scholarship

A Fourth Amendment violation has traditionally involved a physical intrusion such as the search of a house or the seizure of a person or her papers. Today, investigators rarely need to break down doors, rummage through drawers, or invade one’s peace and repose to obtain incriminating evidence in an investigation. Instead, the government may unobtrusively intercept information from electronic files, GPS transmissions, and intangible communications. In the near future, it may even be possible to intercept information directly from suspects’ brains. Courts and scholars have analogized modern searches for information to searches of tangible property like containers and have treated …

School Children And Parolees: Not So Special Anymore, Edwin Butterfoss

Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Amendment special needs exception may be one of the Court’s most puzzling doctrines. Since its origin, the Court has struggled to define its limits and its place in the Court’s suspicionless search and seizure jurisprudence. At times the Court has suggested that the exception is the only route to upholding a search or seizure in the absence of individualized suspicion, while at other times it has stated that it is just one of a limited number of exceptions to the requirement of individualized suspicion. Historically, while the application of the special needs exception has been unpredictable, one thing …

The Ice Storm In U.S. Homes: An Urgent Call For Policy Change, Katherine Evans

Faculty Scholarship

Since its creation in 2003, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used increasingly aggressive tactics to enforce U.S. immigration law. One of ICE's most prominent enforcement initiatives is its practice of raiding the homes of immigrants. Accounts of home raids from victims all over the country reveal a pattern of practice that differs widely from ICE's official statements regarding raids. This paper establishes that although immigration officials are governed by the Fourth Amendment when conducting home raids, ICE's agents nonetheless regularly violate the Constitution when carrying out home raids. Additionally, this paper argues that the number and …

Bright Line Breaking Point: Embracing Justice Scalia’S Call For The Supreme Court To Abandon An Unreasonable Approach To Fourth Amendment Search And Seizure Law, Edwin Butterfoss

Faculty Scholarship

In Thornton v. United States, the United States Supreme Court applied the bright-line rule of New York v. Belton to uphold the search of containers in the passenger compartment of a car when the arresting officer made initial contact with the suspect alter the suspect had parked his car and started walking away. Justice Scalia concurred in the judgment but criticized the majority for relying on the bright-line rule of Belton to uphold the search, stating that the Court’s effort to apply the Belton rule stretched that doctrine "beyond its breaking point."

Justice Scalia found the search in Thornton lawful …

Making The Right Gamble: The Odds On Probable Cause, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

Again, is there probable cause to detain, arrest or search each passenger? Is there probable cause to search each passenger's luggage, their autos parked at the airport and their residences? This article seeks the answer to the hypotheticals in sources ranging from the judiciary's own pronouncements on probable cause to linguistics, history mathematics and cognitive psychology.

Be My Guest: The Hidden Holding Of Minnesota V. Carter, Edwin J. Butterfoss, Mary Sue B. Snyder

Faculty Scholarship

This Article first examines the Carter case in detail, including the opinions of the state courts and the briefs and oral argument in the United States Supreme Court, before turning to the Court's decision. The Article highlights the importance of Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion and explains the "hidden holding" of the case, raising the question of whether lowercourts will apply the correct rule from the case. The Article argues that the Court's denial of the defendants' claim of a reasonable expectation of privacy, combined with its failure to provide guidance as to when non-overnight visitors in homes will have the …

The Qualitative Dimension Of Fourth Amendment "Reasonableness", Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Supreme Court doctrine protects two seemingly distinct kinds of interests under the heading of privacy rights: one "substantive," the other "procedural." The Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" has been generally interpreted to protect procedural privacy. Searches are typically defined as governmental inspections of activities and locations in which an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy from observation. In the typical case, this reasonable expectation of privacy may be breached only where the government has acquired a quantitatively substantial objective basis for believing that the search would uncover evidence of a crime. Substantive privacy rights have not …

Choosing Perspectives In Criminal Procedure, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, Professor Bacigal examines the Supreme Court's use of various perspectives in examining the reasonableness of searches and seizures. Although the Supreme Court purports to rely on a consistent method of constitutional analysis when rendering decisions on Fourth Amendment issues, the case law in this area indicates that the Court is influenced sometimes by the citizen's perspective, sometimes by the police officers' perspective, and sometimes by the perspective of the hypothesized reasonable person. After identifying the role of perspectives in a number of seminal Court decisions, Professor Bacigal discusses the benefits and limitations of the Court's reliance on …

Fourth Amendment Accommodations: (Un)Compelling Public Needs, Balancing Acts, And The Fiction Of Consent, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

The problems of public housing-including crime, drugs, and gun violence- have received an enormous amount of national attention. Much attention has also focused on warrantless searches and consent searches as solutions to these problems. This Note addresses the constitutionality of these proposals and asserts that if the Supreme Court's current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is taken to its logical extremes, warrantless searches in public housing can be found constitutional. The author argues, however, that such an interpretation fails to strike the proper balance between public need and privacy in the public housing context. The Note concludes by proposing alternative consent-based regimes …

Putting The People Back Into The Fourth Amendment, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

This Article attempts to answer such questions by examining the evolution of search-and-seizure law in America. Although the structural nature of decision making embodied in the Bill of Rights has far-ranging implications for that entire document, I limit my consideration to the unique aspects of the Fourth Amendment. In doing so I have followed the suggestion that constitutional interpretation considers a threefold question: "Does the Constitution mean what it was meant to mean, or what it has come to mean, or what it ought to mean?" Part I examines the historical involvement of juries in search-and-seizure cases; Part II considers …

The Right Of The People To Be Secure, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article defines searches and seizures of property and person, discussing the Supreme Court's initially broad interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and its subsequent narrowing in later decisions. Part II discusses several police "chase cases" leading up to the elimination of accidental and attempted seizures from Fourth Amendment protection in Brower v. County of Inyo and California v. Hodari D. Part Ill analyzes the Brower decision and its effect on accidental seizures, concluding that the analysis set forth therein should be abolished and advocating an alternate test. Part IV confronts the Court's elimination of attempted seizures from …

In Pursuit Of The Elusive Fourth Amendment: The Police Chase Cases, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

The first section of this article considers whether the police officer's intent is an indispensable component of fourth amendment seizures. The second section of the article addresses the Court's efforts to define a seizure· by focusing upon the objective causal link between an officer's efforts to apprehend a suspect and the suspect's attempt to avoid apprehension.

Dodging A Bullet, But Opening Old Wounds In Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

The Court began its opinion in Winston by "putting to one side the procedural protections of the warrant requirement. " The parties agreed that the defendant had received "a full measure of procedural protections"and that the state had met the "ordinary" standard of probable cause for a search. "Notwithstanding the existence of probable cause" and the state's full compliance with the procedures required by the warrant clause, the Court found that the reasonableness clause of the fourth amendment demands "a more substantial justification" than probable cause. The Court viewed this higher level of justification as a substantive requirement of the …

Warrantless Searches And Seizures In Virginia, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

There is a well-recognized lack of consistency and clarity in fourth amendment decisions. At times, each search and seizure case seen is unique and the decisions appear to rest on factual determinations rather than on legal principles. Nonetheless, it is desirable to have some understanding of the basic principles of the fourth amendment, and the way in which these principles affect individual cases.

The Jury As A Source Of Reasonable Search And Seizure Law, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

The definition of a reasonable search has bedeviled the United States Supreme Court for some ninety years. Formal logic or legal reasoning assists the Court in tracing premise to conclusion, but does not alone suggest the initial premise. The Court's difficulty in fourth amendment cases, in general, lies in identifying the premise-the fundamental value which is embodied in this constitutional guarantee. The Court has recognized that this fundamental value, whatever it is, has an origin outside the language of the amendment, and the Court has considered sources such as history, popular consensus, natural law, and utilitarian balancing to find this …

The Fourth Amendment In Flux: The Rise And Fall Of Probable Cause, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

This article will demonstrate the Supreme Court's inability to develop an objective methodology to derive and apply fourth amendment principles under either the traditional probable cause approach or the balancing approach. A detailed analysis of traditional probable cause will reveal that its premises are ultimately subjectively derived? This examination will also show that returning to traditional probable cause would necessitate resurrecting the unrealistic premise that an individual's privacy interest is always outweighed by the government's interest in searching if the authorities meet a static standard of probable cause. The article will then discuss the advent of the balancing approach and …