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Failing To Keep "Easy Cases Easy": Florida V. Jardines Refuses To Reconcile Inconsistencies In Fourth Amendment Privacy Law By Instead Focusing On Physical Trespass, George M. Dery Iii

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

This Article analyzes Florida v. Jardines, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a canine sniff of a home from the front porch was a Fourth Amendment search. In reaching this ruling, the Court employed the property-rights definition of a search newly recovered the prior term in United States v. Jones instead of applying the reasonable expectation of privacy test created in Katz v. United States. This work examines the concerns created by Jardines’s ruling. This Article asserts that Jardines refused to resolve a potentially troubling incongruity between Kyllo v. United States, precedent that exalted the privacy of the home, …