Fourth Amendment Commons^™

Mass Arrests & The Particularized Probable Cause Requirement, Amanda Peters

Boston College Law Review

Three Supreme Court cases—United States v. Di Re, Ybarra v. Illinois, and Maryland v. Pringle—established the need for individualized or particularized probable cause in multiple-suspect arrests and searches. These three Supreme Court decisions have been used by plaintiffs seeking to sue police departments and municipalities under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for civil rights violations stemming from mass arrests unsupported by probable cause. Oddly enough, these decisions have also been relied upon by defendants who allege that the law is unclear when it comes to particularized probable cause and multiple-suspect arrests. This Article seeks to carefully examine the ...

Policing Narrative, Tal Kastner

SMU Law Review

Counter narrative, a story that calls attention to and rebuts the presumptions of a dominant narrative framework, functions as an essential tool to reshape the bounds of the law. It has the potential to shape the collective notion of what constitutes legal authority. Black Lives Matter offers a counter narrative that challenges the characterization of the shared public space, among other aspects of contemporary society, as the space of law. Using the concept of necropower—the mobilization and prioritization of the state’s power to kill—I analyze the contested physical and conceptual space of law exposed by the counter ...

Byrd V United States: Unauthorized Drivers Of Rental Cards Have Fourth Amendment Rights? Not As Evident As It Seems, Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

No discerning student of the Supreme Court would contend that Justice Anthony Kennedy broadly interpreted the Fourth Amendment during his thirty years on the Court. His majority opinions in Maryland v. King, Drayton v. United States and his willingness to join the three key sections of Justice Scalia’s opinion in Hudson v. Maryland, which held that suppression is never a remedy for knock-and-announce violations, are just a few examples of Justice Kennedy’s narrow view of the Fourth Amendment.

In light of his previous votes in search and seizure cases, surprisingly Justice Kennedy, in what would be his final ...

Evolving Autonomous Vehicle Technology And The Erosion Of Privacy, Raquel Toral

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Psychosocial Analysis Of An Ethnography At The Cuyahoga County Public Defenders Office, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review

Too often, social science majors become jaded with their field of study due to a misperception of the nature of many potential jobs which they are qualified for. Such discord is prevalent amongst undergraduates who strive for work in the criminal justice system. Hollywood misrepresentations become the archetypes of the aforementioned field, leaving out the necessity and ubiquity of accompanying desk work. Still other social science majors struggle to identify theoretical interpretations in praxis.

Sb 336 - Law Enforcement Officers And Agencies, Richard J. Uberto Jr., Brooke Wilner

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act prohibits data carriers from disclosing to their customers the existence of a subpoena issued for the production of the customers’ records. The Act also allows the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to retain the fingerprints of individuals working in certain professions that require background checks for the duration of employment.

Dialing It Back: Why Courts Should Rethink Students’ Privacy And Speech Rights As Cell Phone Communications Erode The ‘Schoolhouse Gate’, Nicholas J. Mcguire

Duke Law & Technology Review

The ubiquity of cell phones in today’s society has forced courts to change or dismiss established, but inapplicable analytical frameworks. Two such frameworks in the school setting are regulations of student speech and of student searches. This Article traces the constitutional jurisprudence of both First Amendment off-campus speech protection and Fourth Amendment search standards as applied to the school setting. It then analyzes how the Supreme Court’s ruling in Riley v. California complicates both areas. Finally, it proposes a pragmatic solution: by recognizing a categorical First Amendment exception for “substantial threats” against the school community, courts could accommodate ...

The Stored Communications Act: Property Law Enforcement Tool Or Instrument Of Oppression?, Raymond Boyce

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Out Of The “Serbonian Bog”1 Surrounding Government Acquisition Of Third-Party Cell Site Location Information: “Get A Warrant” †, Glenn Williams

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

From Storefront To Dashboard: The Use Of The Americans With Disabilities Act To Govern Websites, Kelby S. Carlson

Catholic University Law Review

The question of the effects of technological change on the interpretation of statutes is a complicated one. Particularly for statutes that govern a broad range of issues, the advent of new technology can precipitate re-examination of the rationale behind, and nature of, the relevant law. The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted, in part, to give Americans with disabilities greater access to public space, allowing them to enjoy the advantages such access offers on an equal footing with the able-bodied. The adoption of digital technology across society and, in particular, the widespread ubiquity of the internet now raise questions about ...

Chilling: The Constitutional Implications Of Body-Worn Cameras And Facial Recognition Technology At Public Protests, Julian R. Murphy

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In recent years body-worn cameras have been championed by community groups, scholars, and the courts as a potential check on police misconduct. Such has been the enthusiasm for body-worn cameras that, in a relatively short time, they have been rolled out to police departments across the country. Perhaps because of the optimism surrounding these devices there has been little consideration of the Fourth Amendment issues they pose, especially when they are coupled with facial recognition technology (FRT). There is one particular context in which police use of FRT equipped body-worn cameras is especially concerning: public protests. This Comment constitutes the ...

Fourth Amendment Protection In The Digital Age, Daniel Sorkin

GGU Law Review Blog

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Carpenter v United States, a case that offers the Court another opportunity to address how far Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless searches and seizures extend. Specifically, the issue before the Court was “whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cell phone records revealing the locations and movement of a cell phone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.”

On appeal before the Sixth Circuit, a divided three-judge panel held that “no search occurred under the Fourth Amendment because Carpenter had no reasonable expectation of privacy in cell ...

Fourth Amendment Constraints On The Technological Monitoring Of Convicted Sex Offenders, Ben A. Mcjunkin, J. J. Prescott

Articles

More than forty U.S. states currently track at least some of their convicted sex offenders using GPS devices. Many offenders will be monitored for life. The burdens and expense of living indefinitely under constant technological monitoring have been well documented, but most commentators have assumed that these burdens were of no constitutional moment because states have characterized such surveillance as ‘‘civil’’ in character—and courts have seemed to agree. In 2015, however, the Supreme Court decided in Grady v. North Carolina that attaching a GPS monitoring device to a person was a Fourth Amendment search, notwithstanding the ostensibly civil ...

The Futile Fourth Amendment: Understanding Police Excessive Force Doctrine Through An Empirical Assessment Of Graham V. Connor, Osagie K. Obasogie, Zachary Newman

Northwestern University Law Review

Graham v. Connor established the modern constitutional landscape for police excessive force claims. The Supreme Court not only refined an objective reasonableness test to describe the constitutional standard, but also held that the Fourth Amendment is the sole avenue for courts to adjudicate claims that police violated a person’s constitutional rights in using force. In this Essay, we ask: What impact did this decision have on the nature of police excessive force claims in federal courts? To address this, we engaged in a qualitative examination of 500 federal cases (250 in the twenty-six years before Graham and 250 in ...

Fourth Amendment Fairness, Richard M. Re

Michigan Law Review

Fourth Amendment doctrine is attentive to a wide range of interests, including security, informational privacy, and dignity. How should courts reconcile these competing concerns when deciding which searches and seizures are “unreasonable”? Current doctrine typically answers this question by pointing to interest aggregation: the various interests at stake are added up, placed on figurative scales, and compared, with the goal of promoting overall social welfare. But interest aggregation is disconnected from many settled doctrinal rules and leads to results that are unfair for individuals. The main alternative is originalism; but historical sources themselves suggest that the Fourth Amendment calls for ...

The Exigencies Of Drunk Driving: Cripps V. State And The Issues With Taking Drivers' Blood Without A Warrant, Timothy Andrea

Boston College Law Review

Few of the government’s investigatory techniques implicate individual privacy concerns more than the taking and testing of a suspect’s blood. These blood draws are a common tool used to fight drunk driving. In 2013, in Missouri v. McNeely, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated the need for case-by-case review when considering whether exigent circumstances justify warrantless blood testing of drunk driving suspects. An Oklahoma statute takes a different approach by categorically abdicating the warrant requirement and authorizing law enforcement to draw blood from any driver involved in an accident that results in serious bodily injury. In 2016, in ...

“You’Re Not Gonna Reach My Telephone”— The Resurgence Of The Fourth Amendment’S Particularity Requirement, Tammie Beassie Banko

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bounded By The Constitution: Resolving The Private Search Doctrine Circuit Split, Mark Kifarkis

Concordia Law Review

This Article analyzes the private search doctrine exception to the Fourth Amendment and the exception's application to smart phones and computers. The private search doctrine allows governmental authorities to replicate a private individual's search without obtaining a warrant. This Article proposes a standard for court's to use to resolve the circuit split on how to apply the exception to today's technology. Presently, there are two standards used by courts. The Article names one standard as the "boundless search approach" that is used by the Fifth and Seventh Circuits. The Article names the other standard as "bounded ...

Lacking Regulated Policy For Dna Evidence, Maia Lister

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Despite its strong presence in criminal justice, DNA analysis is still a minimally regulated area. This minimal regulation devalues DNA evidence through the inconsistencies in these areas. The analysis methods of low template DNA lack a uniform method resulting in varying levels of reliability. Utilizing familial searches to assist in criminal investigations can potentially violate citizen rights. Such violations can also be found in the collection of DNA samples before an arrestee is tried or convicted. There are, however, regulations that could be applied universally to combat the problems that were discussed.

Investigative Practices For Large Money Laundering Crimes, Mary Hutley-Washington

Economic Crime Forensics Capstones

Reportedly, governments, states departments, analysts and law enforcement state, "money laundering has a corrosive effect on a country’s economy. The degree of destruction caused by money laundering interrupts the business flow, runs the risk of financial burdens on banks, and ruins countless countries’ reputation for allowing widespread laundering. Money laundering’s significant consequences are the exposure to the communities; because of the criminal elements individuals are subjected to laundering, i.e., fraud, drug trafficking, and other financial crimes” (Freeman, 2011). It is no surprise that internationally all communities want the battle against money laundering and its use to finance ...