Law Commons^™

Brief Of Amici Curiae -- Heien V. State Of North Carolina, Charles E. Maclean, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity cannot be predicated on conduct that does not violate the law. Put differently, if reasonableness — or reasonable suspicion — is to mean anything, it means that apparent violations of the law must be based on actual violations of the law. The North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision sends a message to drivers throughout the country that they cannot be wrong about what the law requires, even where law enforcement is wrong — dead wrong — about what the law proscribes.

The Conversational Consent Search: How “Quick Look” And Other Similar Searches Have Eroded Our Constitutional Rights, Alexander A. Mikhalevsky

Georgia State University Law Review

One area in which law enforcement agencies have stretched constitutional limits concerns the scope of a suspect’s consent to search his or her vehicle. Police forces across the country have tested the limits of consent by asking vague, conversational questions to suspects with the goal of obtaining a suspect’s consent to search, even though that individual may not want to allow the search or may not know that he or she has the right to deny consent.

Conversational phrases like “Can I take a quick look?” or “Can I take a quick look around?” have “emerg[ed] as . . . …

Binary Searches And The Central Meaning Of The Fourth Amendment, Lawrence Rosenthal

Lawrence Rosenthal

Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is frequently accused of doctrinal incoherence. A primary reason is the persistence of two competing conceptions of “unreasonable” search and seizure. The first is libertarian in character; it understands the Fourth Amendment’s command of reasonableness as establishing a constitutional boundary on investigative powers. On this view, the prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure keeps society free by limiting the government’s investigative reach. The second conception understands the Fourth Amendment's prohibition as freedom against unjustified government intrusion. This conception of reasonableness is essentially pragmatic in character, balancing liberty and law-enforcement interests.

This article interrogates these competing conceptions by …

When Counsel Abandonment Forecloses Post-Conviction Relief: An Argument For Applying The Doctrine Of Cause And Prejudice To The Aedpa Statute Of Limitations, Katherine I. Puzone

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.