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Probable Cause And Reasonable Suspicion: Totality Tests Or Rigid Rules?, Kit Kinports
Probable Cause And Reasonable Suspicion: Totality Tests Or Rigid Rules?, Kit Kinports
Kit Kinports
This piece argues that the Supreme Court's April 2014 decision in Navarette v. Calfornia, like last Term's opinion in Florida v. Harris, deviates from longstanding Supreme Court precedent treating probable cause and reasonable suspicion as totality-of-the-circumstances tests. Instead, these two recent rulings essentially rely on rigid rules to define probable cause and reasonable suspicion. The article criticizes the Court for selectively endorsing bright-line tests that favor the prosecution, and argues that both decisions generate rules that oversimplify and therefore tend to be overinclusive.
Camreta And Al-Kidd: The Supreme Court, The Fourth Amendment, And Witnesses, Kit Kinports
Camreta And Al-Kidd: The Supreme Court, The Fourth Amendment, And Witnesses, Kit Kinports
Kit Kinports
Although few noticed the link between them, two Supreme Court cases decided in the same week last Term, Ashcroft v. al-Kidd and Camreta v. Greene, both involved the Fourth Amendment implications of detaining witnesses to a crime. Al-Kidd, an American citizen, was arrested under the federal material witness statute in connection with an investigation into terrorist activities, and Greene, a nine-year-old suspected victim of child abuse, was seized and interrogated at school by two state officials. The opinions issued in the two cases did little to resolve the constitutional issues that arise in witness detention cases, and in fact muddied …
Race And The Decision To Detain A Suspect, Sheri Johnson
Race And The Decision To Detain A Suspect, Sheri Johnson
Sheri Lynn Johnson
No abstract provided.
The Qualitative Dimension Of Fourth Amendment "Reasonableness", Sherry F. Colb
The Qualitative Dimension Of Fourth Amendment "Reasonableness", Sherry F. Colb
Sherry Colb
Supreme Court doctrine protects two seemingly distinct kinds of interests under the heading of privacy rights: one "substantive," the other "procedural." The Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" has been generally interpreted to protect procedural privacy. Searches are typically defined as governmental inspections of activities and locations in which an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy from observation. In the typical case, this reasonable expectation of privacy may be breached only where the government has acquired a quantitatively substantial objective basis for believing that the search would uncover evidence of a crime. Substantive privacy rights have not …
Probabilities In Probable Cause And Beyond: Statistical Versus Concrete Harms, Sherry F. Colb
Probabilities In Probable Cause And Beyond: Statistical Versus Concrete Harms, Sherry F. Colb
Sherry Colb
No abstract provided.
Innocence, Privacy, And Targeting In Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Sherry F. Colb
Innocence, Privacy, And Targeting In Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Sherry F. Colb
Sherry Colb
No abstract provided.
Standing Room Only: Why Fourth Amendment Exclusion And Standing Can No Longer Logically Coexist, Sherry F. Colb
Standing Room Only: Why Fourth Amendment Exclusion And Standing Can No Longer Logically Coexist, Sherry F. Colb
Sherry Colb
No abstract provided.
Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation From The October 2006 Term, Martin Schwartz
Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation From The October 2006 Term, Martin Schwartz
Martin A. Schwartz
No abstract provided.
Recent Decision Note, Thomas L. Shaffer
The Supreme Court And Its Purported Preference For Search Warrants, Robert M. Bloom
The Supreme Court And Its Purported Preference For Search Warrants, Robert M. Bloom
Robert M. Bloom
No abstract provided.
Cell Phone Location Data And The Fourth Amendment: A Question Of Law, Not Fact, Susan Freiwald
Cell Phone Location Data And The Fourth Amendment: A Question Of Law, Not Fact, Susan Freiwald
Susan Freiwald
In a significant ruling in the fall of 2010, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the government’s claim that it could compel cell phone service providers to disclose customer records that indicate the cell towers with which a cell phone has communicated (cell phone location information or CSLI) without obtaining a warrant based on probable cause. In a break with past decisions, the court rejected application of a “third party rule,” under which cell phone users are seen to assume the risk that their providers will disclose location data without the protections of a warrant requirement. The court, however, …
Probability, Probable Cause, And The Law Of Unintended Consequences, Lawrence Rosenthal
Probability, Probable Cause, And The Law Of Unintended Consequences, Lawrence Rosenthal
Lawrence Rosenthal
This brief essay responds to Max Minzer's article "Putting Probability Back into Probable Cause." The essay supports Professor Minzer's proposal for the use of empirical evidence of the success of a given investigating officer or investigative technique in assessing the existence of probable cause to search or seize, but offers a caveat. If an officer's "hit rate" becomes central to Fourth Amendment analysis, there is a serious danger of overdeterrence which, in turn, could lead to a dangerous escalation in violent crime. The essay offers some proposals for minimizing the risk of overdeterrence in an empirically-based regime of probable cause.