Criminal Procedure Commons^™

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

Sherry Colb

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 …