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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Fourth Amendment

Form Over Substance? Qualified Immunity In Groh V. Ramirez, Lenard F. Harrelson Jr. Jul 2005

Form Over Substance? Qualified Immunity In Groh V. Ramirez, Lenard F. Harrelson Jr.

Mercer Law Review

In Groh v. Ramirez, the United States Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that a search warrant may be so facially defective that the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid. The Court reasoned that the warrant deficiency in this case, revolving around the particularity requirement, flows directly from the text of the Fourth Amendment, and thus, no reasonable officer could believe a warrant that obviously did not comply with this standard was valid. The Court proceeded to deny the executing officer qualified immunity by holding that reliance upon this facially defective warrant was objectively unreasonable. …


To Serve And Protect: Thornton V. United States And The Newly Anemic Fourth Amendment, Jason Lewis Jul 2005

To Serve And Protect: Thornton V. United States And The Newly Anemic Fourth Amendment, Jason Lewis

Mercer Law Review

In Thornton v. United States, the United States Supreme Court further weakened the protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment by holding that an officer may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle incident to arrest even when the suspect is first approached after exiting the vehicle. Under the guise of providing protection to police officers, this decision greatly expands the power of an arresting officer to search the private property of the arrestee and creates uncertainty on what constitutional limits apply to searches incident to arrest outside the home.


Equality, Objectivity, And Neutrality, Alafair S. Burke May 2005

Equality, Objectivity, And Neutrality, Alafair S. Burke

Michigan Law Review

When is homicide reasonable? That familiar, yet unanswered question continues to intrigue both courts and criminal law scholars, in large part because any response must first address the question, "reasonable to whom?" The standard story about why that threshold question is both difficult and interesting usually involves a juxtaposition of "objective" and "subjective" standards for judging claims of reasonableness. On the one hand, the story goes, is a "subjective" standard of reasonableness under which jurors evaluate the reasonableness of a criminal defendant's beliefs and actions by comparing them to those of a hypothetical reasonable person sharing all of the individual …


Identity Crisis: United States V. Hiibel And The Continued Erosion Of Privacy Rights, Beth Rosenblum Mar 2005

Identity Crisis: United States V. Hiibel And The Continued Erosion Of Privacy Rights, Beth Rosenblum

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Faith-Based Miranda: Why The New Missouri V. Seibert Police Bad Faith Test Is A Terrible Idea, Joelle A. Moreno Jan 2005

Faith-Based Miranda: Why The New Missouri V. Seibert Police Bad Faith Test Is A Terrible Idea, Joelle A. Moreno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Since When Is Dicta Enough To Trump Fourth Amendment Rights? The Aftermath Of Florida V. J.L., Melanie D. Wilson Jan 2005

Since When Is Dicta Enough To Trump Fourth Amendment Rights? The Aftermath Of Florida V. J.L., Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

Unfortunately for individual liberty, and the inestimable right to personal security, the Supreme Court's extraneous language in its otherwise, well-reasoned decision in Florida v. J.L., and the lower federal courts' interpretation of that extraneous language, have jeopardized the Constitutional right to be free from capricious stops and frivolous frisks, both of which necessarily intrude on the sanctity of the person and sometimes "inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment . . . ." When read logically and narrowly, the J.L. decision holds that an anonymous telephone tip, alone, does not give law enforcement a sufficient legal basis to stop or …


Police Shootings Under The Fourth Amendment, Wayne C. Beyer Jan 2005

Police Shootings Under The Fourth Amendment, Wayne C. Beyer

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

The Fourth Amendment permits police to use deadly force when there is an imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death to themselves or others. Although the governing standard is well established in a general way, its application to particular facts and circumstances may not be clear to officers on the street. Unless a reasonable police officer would have understood that his/her decision to shoot was clearly constitutionally prohibited, the officer may be entitled to qualified immunity, a decision that the court can make on summary judgment before trial. Discussed first are shootings that are not subject to Fourth Amendment …


American Courts Are Drowning In The "Gene Pool": Excavating The Slippery Slope Mechanisms Behind Judicial Endorsement Of Dna Databases, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 115 (2005), Meghan Riley Jan 2005

American Courts Are Drowning In The "Gene Pool": Excavating The Slippery Slope Mechanisms Behind Judicial Endorsement Of Dna Databases, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 115 (2005), Meghan Riley

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.


How Earl Warren's Twenty-Two Years In Law Enforcement Affected His Work As Chief Justice, Yale Kamisar Jan 2005

How Earl Warren's Twenty-Two Years In Law Enforcement Affected His Work As Chief Justice, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Before becoming governor of California, Earl Warren had spent his entire legal career, twenty-two years, in law enforcement. Professor Kamisar maintains that this experience significantly influenced Warren's work as a Supreme Court justice and gave him a unique perspective into police interrogation and other police practices. This article discusses some of Warren's experiences in law enforcement and searches for evidence of that experience in Warren's opinions. For example, when Warren was head of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, he and his deputies not only relied on confessions in many homicide cases but also themselves interrogated homicide suspects. The seeds …


The Fourth Amendment And Terrorism, John Burkoff Jan 2005

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 …


Police Shootings Under The Fourth Amendment, Wayne C. Beyer Jan 2005

Police Shootings Under The Fourth Amendment, Wayne C. Beyer

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

The Fourth Amendment permits police to use deadly force when there is an imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death to themselves or others. Although the governing standard is well established in a general way, its application to particular facts and circumstances may not be clear to officers on the street. Unless a reasonable police officer would have understood that his/her decision to shoot was clearly constitutionally prohibited, the officer may be entitled to qualified immunity, a decision that the court can make on summary judgment before trial. Discussed first are shootings that are not subject to Fourth Amendment …


Nothing New Under The Sun? A Technologically Rational Doctrine Of Fourth Amendment Search, Stephen E. Henderson Dec 2004

Nothing New Under The Sun? A Technologically Rational Doctrine Of Fourth Amendment Search, Stephen E. Henderson

Stephen E Henderson

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Yet as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, the Amendment places no restriction on police combing through financial records; telephone, e-mail and website transactional records; or garbage left for collection. Indeed there is no protection for any information knowingly provided to a third party, because the provider is said to retain no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information. As technology dictates that more and more of our personal lives are available to anyone equipped to receive them, and as social norms dictate that more and …