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The Case For Stewart Over Harlan On 24/7 Physical Surveillance, Afsheen John Radsan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explains why the government’s physical surveillance can reach a point in terms of duration and intensity that it becomes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. As references, Katz v. United States and Kyllo v. United States stand out from the canon. Katz, decided in 1967, swept away a prior emphasis on property rights and trespass laws to hold that the electronic monitoring of a phone booth was a search. Since then, the two-part test from Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion has received as much attention as the totality-of-the-circumstances test in Justice Stewart’s majority opinion. Kyllo, decided just months before …