Law Commons^™

Katz On A Hot Tin Roof: Saving The Fourth Amendment From Commercial Conditioning By Reviving Voluntariness In Disclosures To Third Parties, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

In a world in which Americans are tracked on the Internet, tracked through their cell phones, tracked through the apps they purchase, and monitored by hundreds of traffic cameras, privacy is quickly becoming nothing more than a quaint vestige of the past.

In a previous article discussing the intersection of technology and the Fourth Amendment, I proposed reframing the issue away from conventional commentary. The Missed Opportunity of United States v. Jones: Commercial Erosion of Fourth Amendment Protection in a Post-Google Earth World, 15 PENN. J. CON. L. 331, 333 (2012). That article posits that society has reached the point …

The Missed Opportunity Of United States V. Jones: Commercial Erosion Of Fourth Amendment Protection In A Post Google Earth World, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. These protections, therefore, are only triggered when the government engages is a “search” or “seizure.” For decades, the Court defined “search” as a government examination of an area where one has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Such an expectation requires both that the individual demonstrate a subjective expectation of privacy and that the expectation is one society finds reasonable. In 1974, Anthony Amsterdam prophesized the unworkability of this test, warning of a day that the government would circumvent it my merely announcing 24 hour surveillance. Similarly, the …

Improbable Cause: A Case For Judging Police By A More Majestic Standard, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

Several prior studies have demonstrated that police sometimes, if not often, lie in an attempt to avoid the effects of the exclusionary rule. This study of federal trial judges in the District of Kansas suggests that judges may be fostering this police perjury. Judges may unwittingly encourage police perjury because they subconsciously recognize that acknowledging perjury will probably result in release of a culpable defendant. Judges may also permit perjury because they cannot determine when police are lying. In either case, the Supreme Court majority's conception of the exclusionary rule naturally leads trial judges to deny defendants' motions to suppress. …