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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Fourth Amendment And New Technologies: Constitutional Myths And The Case For Caution, Orin S. Kerr Jul 2019

The Fourth Amendment And New Technologies: Constitutional Myths And The Case For Caution, Orin S. Kerr

Orin Kerr

To one who values federalism, federal preemption of state law may significantly threaten the autonomy and core regulatory authority of The Supreme Court recently considered whether a1mmg an infrared thermal imaging device at a suspect's home can violate the Fourth Amendment. Kyllo v. United States announced a new and comprehensive rule: the government's warrantless use of senseenhancing technology that is "not in general use" violates the Fourth Amendment when it yields "details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion." Justice Scalia's majority opinion acknowledged that the Court's rule was not needed to resolve the case …


Location Tracking And Digital Data: Can Carpenter Build A Stable Privacy Doctrine?, Evan H. Caminker Jun 2019

Location Tracking And Digital Data: Can Carpenter Build A Stable Privacy Doctrine?, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

In Carpenter v United States, the Supreme Court struggled to modernize twentieth-century search and seizure precedents for the “Cyber Age.” Twice previously this decade the Court had tweaked Fourth Amendment doctrine to keep pace with advancing technology, requiring a search warrant before the government can either peruse the contents of a cell phone seized incident to arrest or use a GPS tracker to follow a car’s long-term movements.


The Normative Fourth Amendment, Matthew Tokson May 2019

The Normative Fourth Amendment, Matthew Tokson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

For decades, courts have used a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard to determine whether a government action is a Fourth Amendment search. Scholars have convincingly argued that this test is incoherent, arbitrary, and incapable of protecting privacy against modern forms of surveillance. Yet few alternatives have been proposed, and those alternatives pose many of the same problems as the current standard.

This Article offers a new theoretical approach for determining the scope of the Fourth Amendment. It develops a normative model of Fourth Amendment searches, one that explicitly addresses the balance between law enforcement effectiveness and citizens’ interests inherent in …


Secret Searches: The Sca's Standing Conundrum, Aviv S. Halpern Jan 2019

Secret Searches: The Sca's Standing Conundrum, Aviv S. Halpern

Michigan Law Review

The Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) arms federal law enforcement agencies with the ability to use a special type of warrant to access users’ electronically stored communications. In some circumstances, SCA warrants can require service providers to bundle and produce a user’s electronically stored communications without ever disclosing the existence of the warrant to the individual user until charges are brought. Users that are charged will ultimately receive notice of the search after the fact through their legal proceedings. Users that are never charged, however, may never know that their communications were obtained and searched. This practice effectively makes the provisions …


Forensic Border Searches After Carpenter Require Probable Cause And A Warrant, Christopher I. Pryby Jan 2019

Forensic Border Searches After Carpenter Require Probable Cause And A Warrant, Christopher I. Pryby

Michigan Law Review

Under the border search doctrine, courts have upheld the federal government's practice of searching people and their possessions upon entry into or exit from the United States, without any requirement of suspicion, as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Since the advent of electronic devices with large storage capacities, courts have grappled with whether this definition of reasonableness continues to apply. So far, courts have consistently characterized “nonforensic” border inspections of electronic devices (for example, paging through photos on a phone) as “routine” searches that, like inspecting luggage brought across international lines, require no suspicion. But there is a circuit split …