Law Commons^™

The Unconstitutional Conditions Vacuum In Criminal Procedure, Kay L. Levine, Jonathan R. Nash, Robert A. Schapiro

Faculty Articles

For more than a century, the Supreme Court has applied the unconstitutional conditions doctrine in many contexts, scrutinizing government efforts to condition the tradeoff of rights for benefits with regard to speech, funding, and takings, among others. The Court has declined, however, to invoke the doctrine in the area of criminal procedure, where people accused of crime are often asked to—and often do—surrender their constitutional rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments in return for some benefit. Despite its insistence that the unconstitutional conditions doctrine applies broadly across the Bill of Rights, the Court’s jurisprudence demonstrates that the doctrine …

The Carpenter Test As A Transformation Of Fourth Amendment Law, Matthew Tokson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

For over fifty years, the Fourth Amendment’s scope has been largely dictated by the Katz test, which applies the Amendment’s protections only when the government has violated a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” This vague standard is one of the most criticized doctrines in all of American law, and its lack of coherence has made Fourth Amendment search law notoriously confusing. Things have become even more complex following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Carpenter v. United States, which has spawned its own alternative test for determining the Fourth Amendment’s scope. The emerging Carpenter test looks to the revealing nature …

Rewriting Whren V. United States, Jonathan Feingold, Devon Carbado

Faculty Scholarship

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Whren v. United States—a unanimous opinion in which the Court effectively constitutionalized racial profiling. Despite its enduring consequences, Whren remains good law today. This Article rewrites the opinion. We do so, in part, to demonstrate how one might incorporate racial justice concerns into Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, a body of law that has long elided and marginalized the racialized dimensions of policing. A separate aim is to reveal the “false necessity” of the Whren outcome. The fact that Whren was unanimous, and that even progressive Justices signed on, might lead one to conclude that …

Requiring What’S Not Required: Circuit Courts Are Disregarding Supreme Court Precedent And Revisiting Officer Inadvertence In Cyberlaw Cases, Michelle Zakarin

Scholarly Works

As the age of technology has taken this country by surprise and left us with an inability to formally prepare our legal system to incorporate these advances, many courts are forced to adapt by applying pre-technology rules to new technological scenarios. One illustration is the plain view exception to the Fourth Amendment. Recently, the issue of officer inadvertence at the time of the search, a rule that the United States Supreme Court has specifically stated is not required in plain view inquiries, has been revisited in cyber law cases. It could be said that the courts interested in the existence …

The Aftermath Of Carpenter: An Empirical Study Of Fourth Amendment Law, 2018-2021, Matthew Tokson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Fourth Amendment law is in flux. The Supreme Court recently established, in the landmark case Carpenter v. United States, that individuals can retain Fourth Amendment rights in information they disclose to a third party. In the internet era, this ruling has the potential to extend privacy protections to a huge variety of sensitive digital information. But Carpenter is also notoriously vague. Scholars and lower courts have tried to guess at what the law of Fourth Amendment searches will be going forward—and have reached different, contradictory conclusions.

This Article reports the results of a large-scale empirical study of the impact of …

42nd Annual Foulston-Siefkin Lecture: The Next Wave Of Fourth Amendment Challenges After Carpenter, Matthew Tokson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This is an edited and adapted version of the 42nd Annual Foulston Siefkin Lecture, delivered at Washburn University School of Law.

The lecture discusses the future of Fourth Amendment law following the Supreme Court’s enormously important decision in Carpenter v. United States. It analyzes Carpenter and argues that its detailed account of the privacy harms caused by government surveillance will be its most important legacy. Moreover, the Court’s emphasis on the risk of privacy harm is not a one-off or a sharp break from previous practice. Carpenter is consistent with a long line of Supreme Court decisions ignoring or reshaping …

Supreme Irrelevance: The Court’S Abdication In Criminal Procedure Jurisprudence, Tonja Jacobi, Ross Berlin

Faculty Articles

Criminal procedure is one of the Supreme Court’s most active areas of jurisprudence, but the Court’s rulings are largely irrelevant to the actual workings of the criminal justice system. The Court’s irrelevance takes two forms: objectively, on the numbers, its jurisprudence fails to protect the vast majority of people affected by the criminal justice system; and in terms of salience, the Court has sidestepped the major challenges in the United States today relating to the criminal justice system. These challenges include discrimination in stops and frisks, fatal police shootings, unconscionable plea deals, mass incarceration, and disproportionate execution of racial minorities. …

Brief Of The National Association For Public Defense As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Byrd V. U.S. (U.S. June 12, 2017) (No. 16- 1371)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

More than two centuries after it was ratified, the Fourth Amendment continues to protect the “right of the people to be secure” from “unreasonable searches.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Modern technological advances and social developments do not render our rights “any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought.” Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2494–95 (2014). This Court plays an essential role in ensuring that the Fourth Amendment retains its vitality as an indispensable safeguard of liberty, even as Americans dramatically change the ways they organize their everyday affairs. This case calls for the Court to …

Carpenter V. United States: Brief Of Scholars Of Criminal Procedure And Privacy As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Amici curiae are forty-two scholars engaged in significant research and/or teaching on criminal procedure and privacy law. This brief addresses issues that are within amici’s particular areas of scholarly expertise. They have a shared interest in clarifying the law of privacy in the digital era, and believe that a review of scholarly literature on the topic is helpful to answering the question in this case. This brief is co-authored by Harry Sandick, Kathrina Szymborski, & Jared Buszin of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.Carpenter v. United States presents an opportunity to reconsider the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. Cell …

Newsroom: A True Original(Ist) 02-15-2016, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Anthony Amsterdam's Perspectives On The Fourth Amendment, And What It Teaches About The Good And Bad In Rodriguez V. United States, Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

Anthony Amsterdam’s article, Perspectives On The Fourth Amendment is one of the best, if not the best, law review article written on the Fourth Amendment. Thus, Minnesota Law Review on its hundredth anniversary fittingly recognizes and honors Professor Amsterdam’s article in its Symposium edition, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Celebrating 100 Volumes of the Minnesota Law Review.” I am flattered that the Law Review invited me to participate in this Symposium.

Specifically, my article connects two perspectives from Amsterdam’s article — the Fourth Amendment’s concern with discretionary police power and the Framers’ vision of the Fourth Amendment to bar …

The Supreme Court's Quiet Expansion Of Qualified Immunity, Kit Kinports

Journal Articles

This Essay discusses the Supreme Court’s tendency in recent opinions to covertly expand the reach of the qualified immunity defense available to public officials in § 1983 civil rights suits. In particular, the Essay points out that the Court, often in per curiam rulings, has described qualified immunity in increasingly broad terms and has qualified and retreated from its precedents, without offering any explanation or even acknowledging that it is deviating from past practice.

In making this claim, I focus on three specific issues: the manner in which the Court characterizes the standard governing the qualified immunity defense; the question …

Anthony Amsterdam's Perspectives On The Fourth Amendment, And What It Teaches About The Good And Bad In Rodriguez V. United States, Tracey Maclin

UF Law Faculty Publications

Anthony Amsterdam’s article, Perspectives On The Fourth Amendment is one of the best, if not the best, law review article written on the Fourth Amendment. Thus, Minnesota Law Review on its hundredth anniversary fittingly recognizes and honors Professor Amsterdam’s article in its Symposium edition, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Celebrating 100 Volumes of the Minnesota Law Review.” I am flattered that the Law Review invited me to participate in this Symposium. Specifically, my article connects two perspectives from Amsterdam’s article — the Fourth Amendment’s concern with discretionary police power and the Framers’ vision of the Fourth Amendment to bar …

Policing In The Era Of Permissiveness: Mitigating Misconduct Through Third-Party Standing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

On April 4, 2015, Walter L. Scott was driving his vehicle when he was stopped by Officer Michael T. Slager of the North Charleston, South Carolina, police department for a broken taillight. A dash cam video from the officer’s vehicle showed the two men engaged in what appeared to be a rather routine verbal exchange. Sometime after Slager returned to his vehicle, Scott exited his car and ran away from Slager, prompting the officer to pursue him on foot. After he caught up with Scott in a grassy field near a muffler establishment, a scuffle between the men ensued, purportedly …

Government Analysis Of Shed Dna Is A Search Under The Fourth Amendment, Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses whether the Fourth Amendment is implicated when police surreptitiously collect and analyze a person’s involuntarily shed DNA.

Law enforcement officers will often obtain shed or abandoned DNA samples from persons who they suspect have committed crimes, but lack sufficient evidence to arrest or detain such persons. When utilizing abandoned or shed DNA for criminal investigative purposes, there are two state actions which arguably trigger Fourth Amendment protection. First, the collection of the biological material which contains a person’s DNA might be considered a search under the amendment. Courts, however, have uniformly rejected this argument. For example, when …

Using The Dna Testing Of Arrestees To Reevaluate Fourth Amendment Doctrine, Steven P. Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

With the advent of DNA testing, numerous issues have arisen with regard to obtaining and using evidence developed from such testing. As courts have come to regard DNA testing as a reliable method for linking some people to crimes and for exonerating others, these issues are especially significant. The federal government and most states have enacted statutes that permit or direct the testing of those convicted of at least certain crimes. Courts have almost universally approved such testing, rejecting arguments that obtaining and using such evidence violates the Fourth Amendment.

More recently governments have enacted laws permitting or directing the …

Cutting Cops Too Much Slack, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Police officers can make mistakes, which, for better or worse, the U.S. Supreme Court has often seen fit to forgive. Police, for instance, can make mistakes of fact when assessing whether circumstances justify the seizure of an individual or search of a residence; they can even be mistaken about the identity of those they arrest. This essay examines yet another, arguably more significant context where police mistakes are forgiven: when they seize a person based on their misunderstanding of what a law prohibits.

Government Analysis Of Shed Dna Is A Search Under The Fourth Amendment, Tracey Maclin

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article addresses whether the Fourth Amendment is implicated when police surreptitiously collect and analyze a person’s involuntarily shed DNA. Law enforcement officers will often obtain shed or abandoned DNA samples from persons who they suspect have committed crimes, but lack sufficient evidence to arrest or detain such persons. When utilizing abandoned or shed DNA for criminal investigative purposes, there are two state actions which arguably trigger Fourth Amendment protection. First, the collection of the biological material which contains a person’s DNA might be considered a search under the amendment. Courts, however, have uniformly rejected this argument. For example, when …

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 …

Supreme Court Holds Grand Jury Witnesses Absolutely Immune From § 1983 Liability, Martin Schwartz

Scholarly Works

This article discusses the Supreme Court's ruling in Rehberg v. Paulk, 132 S. Ct. 1497 (2012), which extended the absolute witness immunity recognized in Briscoe v. LaHue, to grand jury witnesses. In an unanimous opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., the Court held that grand jury witnesses are absolutely immune from §1983 liability for their testimony, and even for conspiring to give false testimony.

Everyman's Exclusionary Rule: The Exclusionary Rule And The Rule Of Law (Or Why Conservatives Should Embrace The Exclusionary Rule), Scott E. Sundby

Articles

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Fortifies Qualified Immunity For Law Enforcement Officers In Warrant Cases, Martin Schwartz

Scholarly Works

This article analyzes the significance of the United States Supreme Court decision in Messerschmidt v. Millender, 132 S.Ct. 1652 (2012), upon §1983 Fourth Amendment claims asserted against state and local law enforcement officers who apply for and enforce warrants. Millender held that police officers who sought and executed a very broad warrant authorizing them to search a residence for guns and gang related material were protected by qualified immunity. The author asserts that §1983 plaintiffs, who seek to recover damages based upon either the application or execution of an allegedly unconstitutional warrant, will now have to overcome various layers of …

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 …

Advisory Adjudication, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court decision in Camreta v. Greene is revealing. The Court first issues an opinion authorizing appeals by prevailing parties in qualified immunity cases, even though doing so entails the issuance of an advisory opinion that is not necessary to resolution of the dispute between the parties. And the Court then declines to reach the merits of the underlying constitutional claim in the case, because doing so would entail the issuance of an advisory opinion that was not necessary to the resolution of the dispute between the parties. The Court's decision, therefore, has the paradoxical effect of both honoring …

The Need To Overrule Mapp V. Ohio, William T. Pizzi

Publications

This Article argues that it is time to overrule Mapp v. Ohio. It contends that the exclusionary rule is outdated because a tough deterrent sanction is difficult to reconcile with a criminal justice system where victims are increasingly seen to have a stake in criminal cases. The rule is also increasingly outdated in its epistemological assumption which insists officers act on "reasons" that they can articulate and which disparages actions based on "hunches" or "feelings." This assumption runs counter to a large body of neuroscience research suggesting that humans often "feel" or "sense" danger, sometimes even at a subconscious …

Unconstitutional Courses, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

By now, we almost expect Congress to fail. Nearly every time the federal courts announce a controversial decision, Congress issues a call to rein in "runaway" federal judges. And nearly every time Congress makes a "jurisdiction-stripping" threat, it comes to nothing.

But if Congress's threats possess little fire, we have still been distracted by their smoke. This Article argues that Congress's noisy calls have obscured another potent threat to the "judicial Power": the Supreme Court itself. On occasion, this Article asserts, the Court reshapes and abuses the "judicial Power"--not through bold pronouncements or obvious doctrinal revisions, but through something more …

The Fourth Amendment And Terrorism, John Burkoff

Articles

The important questions we need to ask and to answer B in the perilous times in which we live B is whether the Fourth Amendment applies in the same fashion not just to run of the mill criminals, but also to terrorists and suspected terrorists, individuals who are committing or who have committed B or who may be poised to commit B acts aimed at the destruction of extremely large numbers of people? Professor Burkoff argues that we can protect ourselves from cataclysmic threats of this sort and still maintain a fair and objective application of Fourth Amendment doctrine that …

'A Flame Of Fire': The Fourth Amendment In Perilous Times, John Burkoff

Articles

The important questions we need to ask and to answer in the perilous times in which we live is whether the Fourth Amendment applies in the same fashion not just to run of the mill criminals, but also to terrorists and suspected terrorists, individuals who are committing or who have committed B or who may be poised to commit B acts aimed at the destruction of extremely large numbers of people? Professor Burkoff argues that we can protect ourselves from cataclysmic threats of this sort and still maintain a fair and objective application of Fourth Amendment doctrine that respects our …

Accountability Solutions In The Consent Search And Seizure Wasteland, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

The legal and social issues that have emerged out of the doctrine that people in America have a right against unreasonable government instituted searches and seizures have dominated the dialogue and controversy in the American criminal justice system over the last three decades. A large portion of the debate has centered around the controversial exclusionary rule, which frees the sometimes unmistakably guilty because of irregularities in police procedure.

The notion that society suffers when criminals go free because of the constable's blunder has struck a decidedly political note in the discussion over criminal justice reform. Many observers are quick to …

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 …