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A Linguistic Analysis Of The Meanings Of "Search" In The Fourth Amendment: A Search For Common Sense, Clark D. Cunningham

Clark D. Cunningham

This article offers a new technique for analyzing and evaluating competing interpretations of a legal text and applies that technique to one of the most debated questions of modern constitutional interpretation: the meaning of "searches" in the first clause of the fourth amendment. This Technique is called the "common sense" approach because it begins with a semantic analysis of the text in terms of the sense that the key words have in everyday speech. Such analysis reveals a complex of interlocked concepts that underlies the ability of speakers to recognize meaningful uses of these words. The common sense approach then …