Fourth Amendment Commons^™

The Fourth Amendment's Constitutional Home, Gerald S. Dickinson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The home enjoys omnipresent status in American constitutional law. The Bill of Rights, peculiarly, has served as the central refuge for special protections to the home. This constitutional sanctuary has elicited an intriguing textual and doctrinal puzzle. A distinct thread has emerged that runs through the first five amendments delineating the home as a zone where rights emanating from speech, smut, gods, guns, soldiers, searches, sex, and self-incrimination enjoy special protections. However, the thread inexplicably unravels upon arriving at takings. There, the constitutional text omits and the Supreme Court’s doctrine excludes a special zone of safeguards to the home. This …

Geofence Warrants: Geolocating The Fourth Amendment, A. Reed Mcleod

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Note begins by focusing on the technology and procedure of geofence warrants in Part I. Because an understanding of both the technology and procedure is ultimately required to make any headway in later legal analysis, this step is necessary. The heart of the legal analysis is undertaken in Parts II and III.

In Part II, this Note argues that law enforcement requests for location data require a warrant: either because of the expectation of privacy in location data proposed by cases such as Carpenter v. United States or because some courts have found that Carpenter's holding must mean …