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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Dog Days Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Kit Kinports
The Dog Days Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Kit Kinports
Kit Kinports
This Article discusses Florida v. Harris and Florida v. Jardines, the two Fourth Amendment drug dog opinions issued by the Supreme Court earlier this year. Together the cases hold that a narcotics detection dog effects a “search” when it intrudes on a constitutionally protected area in order to collect evidence, but that the dog’s positive alert is generally sufficient to support a finding of probable cause. The piece argues that both cases essentially generate a bright-line rule, thereby deviating from precedent that favored a more amorphous standard considering all the surrounding circumstances. Like many purportedly clear rules, the ones flowing …
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.
Criminal Procedure In Perspective, Kit Kinports
Criminal Procedure In Perspective, Kit Kinports
Kit Kinports
This Article attempts to situate the Supreme Court's constitutional criminal procedure jurisprudence in the academic debates surrounding the reasonable person standard, in particular, the extent to which objective standards should incorporate a particular individual's subjective characteristics. Analyzing the Supreme Court's search and seizure and confessions opinions, I find that the Court shifts opportunistically from case to case between subjective and objective tests, and between whose point of view - the police officer's or the defendant's - it views as controlling. Moreover, these deviations cannot be explained either by the principles the Court claims underlie the various constitutional provisions at issue …