Fourth Amendment Commons^™

Arrest, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

The constitutional law of arrest governs every occasion on which a government officer interferes with an individual’s freedom, from full-scale custodial arrests at one end of the spectrum to momentary detentions at the other. Its essential principle is that a court, not a police officer or other executive official, shall ultimately decide whether a particular interference with the liberty of an individual is justified. The court may make this judgment either before an arrest, when the police seek a judicial warrant authorizing it, or shortly after an arrest without a warrant, in a hearing held expressly for that purpose. The …