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Articles 1 - 30 of 701
Full-Text Articles in Fourth Amendment
Unshielded: How The Police Can Become Touchable, Brandon Hasbrouck
Unshielded: How The Police Can Become Touchable, Brandon Hasbrouck
Scholarly Articles
This Review proceeds in three Parts. First, Part I examines Shielded’s text, highlighting Schwartz’s analysis of the problem of unaccountable police, the many barriers to holding police accountable, and her proposed solutions. Part II then critically examines Schwartz’s work, examining pieces of the problem she left undiscussed and the relative shortcomings of her discussion of possible solutions. Finally, Part III takes an abolitionist approach, delving into potential nonreformist reforms and the solution of full abolition, as well as examining the most significant objection to abolitionist approaches: the problem of violence.
The Automated Fourth Amendment, Maneka Sinha
The Automated Fourth Amendment, Maneka Sinha
Faculty Scholarship
Courts routinely defer to police officer judgments in reasonable suspicion and probable cause determinations. Increasingly, though, police officers outsource these threshold judgments to new forms of technology that purport to predict and detect crime and identify those responsible. These policing technologies automate core police determinations about whether crime is occurring and who is responsible. Criminal procedure doctrine has failed to insist on some level of scrutiny of—or skepticism about—the reliability of this technology. Through an original study analyzing numerous state and federal court opinions, this Article exposes the implications of law enforcement’s reliance on these practices given the weighty interests …
Administrative Regulation Of Programmatic Policing: Why "Leaders Of A Beautiful Struggle" Is Both Right And Wrong, Christopher Slobogin
Administrative Regulation Of Programmatic Policing: Why "Leaders Of A Beautiful Struggle" Is Both Right And Wrong, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Aerial Investigation Research (AIR), Baltimore's aerial surveillance program, violated the Fourth Amendment because it was not authorized by a warrant. AIR was constitutionaly problematic, but not for the reason given by the Fourth Circuit. AIR, like many other technologically-enhanced policing programs that rely on closed-circuit television (CCTV), automated license plate readers and the like, involves the collection and retention of information about huge numbers ofpeople. Because individualized suspicion does not exist with respect to any of these people's information, an individual-specific warrant …
Telegraph, Telephone And The Internet: The Making Of The Symbiotic Model Of Surveillance States, Dongsheng Zang
Telegraph, Telephone And The Internet: The Making Of The Symbiotic Model Of Surveillance States, Dongsheng Zang
Articles
In the early 2000s, shortly before the September 11 attacks, Daniel J. Solove noted that computer databases in the United States were controlled by public as well as private bureaucracies. In that sense, Solove argued, the "Big Brother" metaphor "fails to capture the most important dimension of the database problem." In his 2008 Lockhart lecture, constitutional law scholar Jack M. Balkin argued that the United States has gradually transformed from a welfare and national security state to a National Surveillance State: "a new form of governance that features the collection, collation, and analysis of information about populations both in the …
Privacy And Property: Constitutional Concerns Of Dna Dragnet Testing, E. Wyatt Jones
Privacy And Property: Constitutional Concerns Of Dna Dragnet Testing, E. Wyatt Jones
Honors Projects
DNA dragnets have attracted both public and scholarly criticisms that have yet to be resolved by the Courts. This review will introduce a modern understanding of DNA analysis, a complete introduction to past and present Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, and existing suggestions concerning similar issues in legal scholarship. Considering these contexts, this review concludes that a focus on privacy and property at once, with a particular sensitivity to the inseverable relationship between the two interests, is Constitutionally consistent with precedent and the most workable means of answering the question at hand.
Searches Without Suspicion: Avoiding A Four Million Person Underclass, Tonja Jacobi, Addie Maguire
Searches Without Suspicion: Avoiding A Four Million Person Underclass, Tonja Jacobi, Addie Maguire
Faculty Articles
In Samson v. California, the Supreme Court upheld warrantless, suspicionless searches for parolees. That determination was controversial both because suspicionless searches are, by definition, anathema to the Fourth Amendment, and because they arguably undermine parolees’ rehabilitation. Less attention has been given to the fact that the implications of the case were not limited to parolees. The opinion in Samson included half a sentence of dicta that seemingly swept probationers into its analysis, implicating the rights of millions of additional people in the United States. Not only is analogizing parolees and probationers not logically sound because the two groups differ …
The Empty Promise Of The Fourth Amendment In The Family Regulation System, Anna Arons
The Empty Promise Of The Fourth Amendment In The Family Regulation System, Anna Arons
Faculty Publications
Each year, state agents search the homes of hundreds of thousands of families across the United States under the auspices of the family regulation system. Through these searches—required elements of investigations into allegations of child maltreatment in virtually every jurisdiction—state agents invade the home, the most protected space in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Accordingly, federal courts agree that the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement applies to family regulation home searches. But almost universally, the abstract recognition of Fourth Amendment protections runs up against a concrete expectation on the ground that state actors should have easy and expansive access to families’ homes. Legislatures …
When Dirty Data Leads To Dirty Policing, Madison Blevins
When Dirty Data Leads To Dirty Policing, Madison Blevins
Law Student Publications
"On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was tragically killed by police officers in Minneapolis. While George Floyd’s death was the shock that catapulted the Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement to the center of international attention, it was also just the tip of the iceberg. Floyd’s death was not the first death of a black person at the hands of the police, nor would it be the last. “A black person is killed by a police officer in America at a rate of more than one [person] every other day.” These repeated incidents across the country have ignited a mass movement …
The Tesla Meets The Fourth Amendment, Adam M. Gershowitz
The Tesla Meets The Fourth Amendment, Adam M. Gershowitz
Faculty Publications
Can police search a smart car’s computer without a warrant? Although the Supreme Court banned warrantless searches of cell phones incident to arrest in Riley v. California, the Court left the door open for warrantless searches under other exceptions to the warrant requirement. This is the first article to argue that the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception currently permits the police to warrantlessly dig into a vehicle’s computer system and extract vast amounts of cell phone data. Just as the police can rip open seats or slash tires to search for drugs under the automobile exception, the police can warrantlessly …
How The “Black Criminal” Stereotype Shapes Black People’S Psychological Experience Of Policing: Evidence Of Stereotype Threat And Remaining Questions, Cynthia J. Najdowski
How The “Black Criminal” Stereotype Shapes Black People’S Psychological Experience Of Policing: Evidence Of Stereotype Threat And Remaining Questions, Cynthia J. Najdowski
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
Cultural stereotypes that link Black race to crime in the U.S. originated in and are perpetuated by policies that result in the disproportionate criminalization and punishment of Black people. The scientific record is replete with evidence that these stereotypes impact perceivers’ perceptions, information processing, and decision-making in ways that produce more negative criminal legal outcomes for Black people than White people. However, relatively scant attention has been paid to understanding how situations that present a risk of being evaluated through the lens of crime-related stereotypes also directly affect Black people. In this article, I consider one situation in particular: encounters …
The Carpenter Test As A Transformation Of Fourth Amendment Law, Matthew Tokson
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 …
Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang
Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang
Articles
Drawing cases from two related areas of law-fingerprint and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) data-this Article proposes a modified framework, built on the Balkin-Levinson emphasis on national politics: First, national politics understood as partisan rivalry cannot account for what I call doctrinal lock-in in this Article, where I will demonstrate that in different stages of American politics-the Lochner era, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era-courts across the nation ruled predominantly in favor of public data collectors-state and federal law enforcement in fingerprint cases. From the 1990s, when DNA data became hot targets of law enforcement, the United States Supreme Court …
The Fourth Amendment's Constitutional Home, Gerald S. Dickinson
The Fourth Amendment's Constitutional Home, Gerald S. Dickinson
Articles
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 …
The Fourth Amendment And General Law, Daniel Epps, Danielle D'Onfro
The Fourth Amendment And General Law, Daniel Epps, Danielle D'Onfro
Scholarship@WashULaw
For decades, Fourth Amendment protections have turned on “reasonable expectations of privacy.” But a new era may be dawning. There is growing interest among judges and scholars in turning away from privacy toward property or positive law as the touchstone for Fourth Amendment protections. Yet many questions remain about how that approach should work, such as where judges should look for positive law and precisely what role positive law should play in Fourth Amendment analysis.
This Article answers those questions, and in so doing lays forth a new, comprehensive theory of the Fourth Amendment. We argue that courts should interpret …
Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Lila J.E. Nojima
Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Lila J.E. Nojima
Faculty Scholarship
Theories of rational behavior assume that actors make decisions where the benefits of their acts exceed their costs or losses. If those expected costs and benefits change over time, behavior will change accordingly as actors learn and internalize the parameters of success and failure. In the context of proactive policing, police stops that achieve any of several goals — constitutional compliance, stops that lead to “good” arrests or summonses, stops that lead to seizures of weapons, drugs, or other contraband, or stops that produce good will and citizen cooperation — should signal to officers the features of a stop that …
Catchall Policing And The Fourth Amendment, Nirej Sekhon
Catchall Policing And The Fourth Amendment, Nirej Sekhon
Duke Law Journal Online
American police do a bit of everything. They direct traffic, resolve private disputes, help the sick and injured, and do animal control. Far less frequently than one might think, they make arrests. Americans reflexively call the police for troubles, big and small. The “catchall tradition” is shorthand for this melding of non-adversarial, public assistance with adversarial, crime-control functions. The catchall tradition means that civilians are exposed to the police’s coercive power as a condition of receiving police help. This Article contends that the catchall tradition is antithetical to constitutional police regulation. The Supreme Court has distinguished adversarial from non-adversarial state …
Rewriting Whren V. United States, Jonathan Feingold, Devon Carbado
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 …
Wrongfully Charged, Golden Gate University School Of Law
Wrongfully Charged, Golden Gate University School Of Law
Golden Gate University Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice Law Journal
On January 10, 2020, a San Francisco Superior Court judge, at the request of a San Francisco Police officer, issued an arrest warrant in connection with a residential burglary. Mot. Suppress Evid. Off’d Against Def. Prelim. Hr’g, 6:1-2. The warrant listed suspects to be arrested and described a residence in Oakland that was to be searched. Id. at 3:5-13. The San Francisco Police Department sent a special operations unit to execute the warrant. Id. at 10:13-22. When the officers arrived at the house, they found the suspect as well as other individuals in the house.
One of those individuals was …
The Constitutional Costs Of School Policing, Maryam Ahranjani, Natalie Saing
The Constitutional Costs Of School Policing, Maryam Ahranjani, Natalie Saing
Faculty Scholarship
Abstract
Responding to fears of violence and liability on K-12 campuses, local school boards and superintendents have made on-site or embedded school police omnipresent in American public schools. Yet, very little attention is paid to the many costs associated with their presence. When situating law enforcement’s presence squarely in the racist history of policing and school policing, the juxtaposition with the civic purpose of public education reveals significant constitutional costs. This Article builds on existing scholarship by bringing attention to the conflict between the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments and the dimensions of embedded school police. Ultimately, schools …
A Solution For The Third-Party Doctrine In A Time Of Data Sharing, Contact Tracing, And Mass Surveillance, Tonja Jacobi, Dustin Stonecipher
A Solution For The Third-Party Doctrine In A Time Of Data Sharing, Contact Tracing, And Mass Surveillance, Tonja Jacobi, Dustin Stonecipher
Faculty Articles
Today, information is shared almost constantly. People share their DNA to track their ancestry or for individualized health information; they instruct Alexa to purchase products or provide directions; and, now more than ever, they use videoconferencing technology in their homes. According to the third-party doctrine, the government can access all such information without a warrant or without infringing on Fourth Amendment privacy protections. This exposure of vast amounts of highly personal data to government intrusion is permissible because the Supreme Court has interpreted the third-party doctrine as a per se rule. However, that interpretation rests on an improper understanding of …
The Corrosive Effect Of Inevitable Discovery On The Fourth Amendment, Tonja Jacobi, Elliot Louthen
The Corrosive Effect Of Inevitable Discovery On The Fourth Amendment, Tonja Jacobi, Elliot Louthen
Faculty Articles
The Supreme Court has only once, almost four decades ago, addressed the doctrine of inevitable discovery, when it established the exception in Nix v. Williams. Inevitable discovery encapsulates the notion of no harm, no foul—if law enforcement would have discovered unlawfully obtained evidence regardless of a constitutional violation, then the resulting evidence need not be excluded. Nix laid out two simple dictates: the eponymous requirement of inevitability and a corresponding evidentiary burden requiring the prosecution to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that law enforcement inevitably would have discovered the evidence without the violation. Such analysis requires counterfactual …
A Call To Dismantle Systemic Racism In Criminal Legal Systems, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson
A Call To Dismantle Systemic Racism In Criminal Legal Systems, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
Objectives: In October 2021, APA passed a resolution addressing ways psychologists could work to dismantle systemic racism in criminal legal systems. The present report, developed to inform APA’s policy resolution, details the scope of the problem and offers recommendations for policy and psychologists to address the issue by advancing related science and practice. Specifically, it acknowledges the roots of modern-day racial and ethnic disparities in rates of criminalization and punishment for people of color as compared to White people. Next, the report reviews existing theory and research that helps explain the underlying psychological mechanisms driving racial and ethnic disparities …
Who Can Protect Black Protest?, Brandon Hasbrouck
Who Can Protect Black Protest?, Brandon Hasbrouck
Scholarly Articles
Police violence both as the cause of and response to the racial justice protests following George Floyd’s murder called fresh attention to the need for legal remedies to hold police officers accountable. In addition to the well-publicized issue of qualified immunity, the differential regimes for asserting civil rights claims against state and federal agents for constitutional rights violations create a further barrier to relief. Courts have only recognized damages as a remedy for such abuses in limited contexts against federal employees under the Bivens framework. The history of Black protest movements reveals the violent responses police have to such challenges …
Felony Financial Disenfranchisement, Neel U. Sukhatme, Alexander Billy, Gaurav Bagwe
Felony Financial Disenfranchisement, Neel U. Sukhatme, Alexander Billy, Gaurav Bagwe
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Individuals with prior felony convictions often must complete all terms of their sentence before they regain voter eligibility. Many jurisdictions include legal-financial obligations (LFOs) — fines, fees, and/or restitution stemming from convictions — in the terms of the sentence. Twenty-eight states, governing over 182 million Americans, either directly or indirectly tie LFO repayment to voting privileges, a practice we call felony financial disenfranchisement.
Proponents of felony financial disenfranchisement posit that returning citizens must satisfy the financial obligations stemming from convictions to restore themselves as community equals. Moralism aside, others claim low rates of electoral participation among those with felony convictions …
Equality In The Streets: Using Proportionality Analysis To Regulate Street Policing, Christopher Slobogin
Equality In The Streets: Using Proportionality Analysis To Regulate Street Policing, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The racially disparate impact and individual and collective costs of stop and frisk, misdemeanor arrests, and pretextual traffic stops have been well documented. Less widely noticed is the contrast between Supreme Court case law permitting these practices and the Court's recent tendency to strictly regulate technologically enhanced searches that occur outside the street policing setting and that--coincidentally or not--happen to be more likely to affect the middle class. If, as the Court has indicated, electronic tracking and searches of digital records require probable cause that evidence of crime will be found, stops and frisks should also require probable cause that …
A New Report Of Entick V. Carrington (1765), Christian Burset, T. T. Arvind
A New Report Of Entick V. Carrington (1765), Christian Burset, T. T. Arvind
Journal Articles
The Supreme Court has described Entick v. Carrington (1765) as “the true and ultimate expression of constitutional law” for the Founding generation. For more than 250 years, judges and commentators have read that case for guidance about the rule of law, executive authority, and the original meaning of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But we have been reading a flawed version. This Article publishes, for the first time, a previously unknown manuscript report of Entick v. Carrington. We explain why this version is more reliable than other reports of the case, and how this new discovery challenges prevailing assumptions about …
Fourth Amendment Privacy In Public: A Fundamental Theory With Application To Location Tracking, Jordan Wallace-Wolf
Fourth Amendment Privacy In Public: A Fundamental Theory With Application To Location Tracking, Jordan Wallace-Wolf
Faculty Scholarship
When we walk out our front door, we are in public and other people may look at us. But intuitively, we don’t open ourselves up to unlimited scrutiny just by going outside. We retain some privacy, even in public. What is the source of this residual public-privacy, and how should the law recognize it without degrading the open character of public space?
The answer given by commentators, and most recently by the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. U.S., comes in the form of two related claims. The first is the chilling theory of the Fourth Amendment. According to this idea, …
Requiring What’S Not Required: Circuit Courts Are Disregarding Supreme Court Precedent And Revisiting Officer Inadvertence In Cyberlaw Cases, Michelle Zakarin
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 …
Telephone Pole Cameras Under Fourth Amendment Law, Matthew Tokson
Telephone Pole Cameras Under Fourth Amendment Law, Matthew Tokson
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
In a series of recent cases, police officers have mounted sophisticated surveillance cameras on telephone poles and pointed them at the homes of people suspected of a crime. These cameras often operate for months or even years without judicial oversight, collecting vast quantities of video footage on suspects and their activities near the home. Pole camera surveillance raises important Fourth Amendment questions that have divided courts and puzzled scholars.
These questions are complicated because Fourth Amendment law is complicated. This is especially the case today as Fourth Amendment law is in a transitional phase, caught between older and newer paradigms …
Smart Meters As A Catalyst For Privacy Law, Matthew Tokson
Smart Meters As A Catalyst For Privacy Law, Matthew Tokson
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
Smart utility meters raise several puzzling legal questions—and answering them can help point the way toward the future of Fourth Amendment and civil privacy law. This forum essay addresses two such issues: use restrictions on collected data, and voluntary data disclosure.
First, more than any other current technology, smart meters compel the development of use restrictions on collected data. The benefits of smart meters are potentially enormous, such that categorically prohibiting public utilities from collecting smart meter data is likely beyond the pale. Yet allowing law enforcement agents to obtain detailed or intimate data about the home without a warrant …