Aerial Trespass And The Fourth Amendment, 2023 University of Michigan Law School
Aerial Trespass And The Fourth Amendment, Randall F. Khalil
Michigan Law Review
Since 1973, courts have analyzed aerial surveillance under the Fourth Amendment by applying the test from Katz v. United States, which states that a search triggers the Fourth Amendment when a government actor violates a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” The Supreme Court applied Katz to aerial surveillance three times throughout the 1980s, yet this area of the law remains unsettled and outcomes are unpredictable. In 2012, the Supreme Court recognized an alternative to the Katz test in Jones v. United States, which held that a search triggers the Fourth Amendment when a government actor physically intrudes into …
Policing The Police: Establishing The Right To Record And Civilian Oversight Boards To Oversee America’S Police, 2023 Brooklyn Law School
Policing The Police: Establishing The Right To Record And Civilian Oversight Boards To Oversee America’S Police, Michael G. Brewster
Brooklyn Law Review
Police misconduct is a persistent issue in the United States that undermines public trust in law enforcement and the criminal justice system as a whole. The video of George Floyd’s arrest and murder played an irreplaceable role in bringing attention to the case and sparking nationwide discussions about the state of policing in America. The video, showing former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck for several minutes, also helped convict Mr. Chauvin of murder at trial. Recording police activity is an important means of holding officers accountable for their actions and protecting citizens from abuse of …
Giving The Fourth Amendment Meaning: Creating An Adversarial Warrant Proceeding To Protect From Unreasonable Searches And Seizures, 2023 University of Michigan Law School
Giving The Fourth Amendment Meaning: Creating An Adversarial Warrant Proceeding To Protect From Unreasonable Searches And Seizures, Ben Mordechai-Strongin
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
For at least the past 40 years, police and prosecutors have had free reign in conducting illegal searches and seizures nominally barred by the Fourth Amendment. The breadth of exceptions to the warrant requirement, the lax interpretation of probable cause, and especially the “good faith” doctrine announced in U.S. v. Leon have led to severe violations of privacy rights, trauma to those wrongly searched or seized, and a court system overburdened by police misconduct cases. Most scholars analyzing the issue agree that the rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment—to be free from unreasonable search and seizure—have been severely eroded or …
Privacy And Property: Constitutional Concerns Of Dna Dragnet Testing, 2023 Bridgewater College
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.
Telegraph, Telephone And The Internet: The Making Of The Symbiotic Model Of Surveillance States, 2023 University of Washington School of Law
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 …
Search And Seizure Budgets, 2023 University of California, Irvine School of Law
Search And Seizure Budgets, Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Stephen E. Henderson
UC Irvine Law Review
This Article proposes a new means of restraining police power: quantitative limits on the number of law enforcement intrusions—searches and seizures—that may occur over a given period of time. Like monetary constraints, search and seizure budgets would aim to curb abusive policing and improve democratic oversight. But unlike their monetary counterparts, budgets would be indexed directly to the specific police activities that most enable escalation and abuse. What is more, budgets are a tool that finds support, conceptually, in the American framing experience. The Fourth Amendment has long been understood to require procedural limits, such as probable cause, on specific …
Pocket Police: The Plain Feel Doctrine Thirty Years Later, 2023 University of Michigan Law School
Pocket Police: The Plain Feel Doctrine Thirty Years Later, Kelly Recker
Michigan Law Review
The idea that a police officer can park in a low-income neighborhood, pull someone over because of their race, frisk everyone in the car, let them go if their pockets are empty, and do the whole thing over and over again until the officer finds something illegal seems deeply upsetting and violative, to say the least. And yet, pretextual traffic stops are constitutional per a unanimous Supreme Court in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), as is seizing obvious contraband during a frisk per Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993). In the thirty years since …
Gone Fishing: Casting A Wide Net Using Geofence Warrants, 2023 University of Washington School of Law
Gone Fishing: Casting A Wide Net Using Geofence Warrants, Ryan Tursi
Washington Law Review
Technology companies across the country receive requests from law enforcement agencies for cell phone location information near the scenes of crimes. These requests rely on the traditional warrant process and are known as geofence warrants, or reverse location search warrants. By obtaining location information, law enforcement can identify potential suspects or persons of interest who were near the scene of a crime when they have no leads. But the use of this investigative technique is controversial, as it threatens to intrude upon the privacy of innocent bystanders who had the misfortune of being nearby when the crime took place. Innocent …
When Taint Teams Go Awry: Laundering Unconstitutional Violations Of The Fourth Amendment, 2023 University of Minnesota
When Taint Teams Go Awry: Laundering Unconstitutional Violations Of The Fourth Amendment, Edward S. Adams, William C. Price Jr.
Arkansas Law Review
In this Article, we examine the legal landscape in which taint teams operate, why taint teams are constitutionally problematic, and propose a solution to protect the attorney-client privilege. In Part I, we will first describe what taint teams are supposed to protect—attorney-client privilege. Next, we review how a taint team gets its documents to review, namely the doctrine surrounding (secret) search warrants. Part I ends with a non exhaustive summary of remedies available when attorney-client privilege is violated during searches. In Part II, we explain the current policies and practices surrounding taint teams, including sources of procedure for taint teams …
Justice For Dogs, 2023 Mesa, Arizona
Justice For Dogs, Alexander J. Lindvall
Arkansas Law Review
This Essay summarizes the Fourth Amendment’s protection of dogs. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable seizures. And nearly every circuit has held that it is unreasonable (and therefore unconstitutional) for an officer to shoot (seize) a dog without a very good reason. Killing a nonthreatening family pet is one of the most egregious forms of police misconduct. The courts rightfully recognize that the unjustified harming of a dog violates the Fourth Amendment.
The Long Road To Justice: Why State Courts Should Lower The Evidentiary Burden For Proving Racialized Traffic Stops And Adopt The Exclusionary Rule As A Remedy For Equal Protection Violations, 2023 University of Washington School of Law
The Long Road To Justice: Why State Courts Should Lower The Evidentiary Burden For Proving Racialized Traffic Stops And Adopt The Exclusionary Rule As A Remedy For Equal Protection Violations, Abby M. Fink
Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice
Racist and brutal policing continues to pervade the criminal legal system. Black and brown people who interact with the police consistently face unequal targeting and treatment. Routine traffic stops are especially dangerous and harmful and can lead to death. Under Whren, a police officer’s racist motivations or implicit bias towards a driver do not influence the constitutionality of a traffic stop. An officer only needs to show there was probable cause to believe a traffic stop occurred. Although the unconstitutionality of pre-textual traffic stops has been widely explored since Whren, both federal and state courts have struggled to find legal …
Searches Without Suspicion: Avoiding A Four Million Person Underclass, 2023 Brigham Young University Law School
Searches Without Suspicion: Avoiding A Four Million Person Underclass, Tonja Jacobi, Addie Maguire
BYU Law Review
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 in …
“Alexa, Am I A Murderer?”: An Analysis Of Whether The First Amendment Protects Smart Speaker Communications, 2023 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
“Alexa, Am I A Murderer?”: An Analysis Of Whether The First Amendment Protects Smart Speaker Communications, Josie A. Bates
Arkansas Law Review
State v. Bates poses interesting First Amendment questions that go far beyond the case itself, such as whether communications to and from smart speakers are protected under the First Amendment and, if so, whether the government must therefore meet a heightened standard before obtaining information from these devices. But currently, there are no definite answers. Thus, this analysis will attempt to answer these questions as well as offer general guidance for the future of First and Fourth Amendment law in the age of ever-changing technological advancements and never-ending criminal accusations.
A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella
Seattle University Law Review
The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …
Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, 2023 Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Are Police Officers Bayesians? Police Updating In Investigative Stops, Jeffrey Fagan, Lila Nojima
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
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, the 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 increase its rewards …
Searches Without Suspicion: Avoiding A Four Million Person Underclass, 2023 Emory University School of Law
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 …
Crimes Of Suspicion, 2023 Emory University School of Law
Crimes Of Suspicion, Lauryn P. Gouldin
Emory Law Journal
Requiring that officers have suspicion of specific crimes before they seize people during stops or arrests is a fundamental rule-of-law limitation on government power. Until very recently, the Supreme Court studiously avoided saying whether reasonable suspicion for street and traffic stops must be crime specific, and lower courts are sharply divided as a result. Statements made in Kansas v. Glover that the Fourth Amendment requires reasonable suspicion of a “particular crime” or of “specific criminal activity” may reflect an effort to rehabilitate this foundational principle, but crime specificity was not the Court’s focus in Glover. Meanwhile, Fourth Amendment scholars, even …
The Carpenter Test As A Transformation Of Fourth Amendment Law, 2023 S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah
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 …
The Empty Promise Of The Fourth Amendment In The Family Regulation System, 2023 St. John's University School of Law
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 …
Expanding The Sixth Amendment’S Right To Counsel To Ensure Fairness For Noncitizen Defendants, 2023 Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Expanding The Sixth Amendment’S Right To Counsel To Ensure Fairness For Noncitizen Defendants, Kathy Santamaria Mendez
Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice
No abstract provided.