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The Fourth Amendment Categorical Imperative, David Gray
The Fourth Amendment Categorical Imperative, David Gray
Michigan Law Review Online
The vast majority of current Fourth Amendment doctrine is unfounded, incoherent, and dangerous. The culprit is the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in Katz v. United States, which defines “search” as government conduct that violates subjectively manifested expectations of privacy “that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’ ” This is pure applesauce. Nowhere will you find a standard dictionary that defines “search” in these terms. Neither will you hear a native speaker of the English language use “search” in this sense unless her mind has been polluted by a semester of studying criminal procedure. The Court created this definition …
Collateral Review Of Career Offender Sentences: The Case For Coram Nobis, Douglas J. Bench Jr.
Collateral Review Of Career Offender Sentences: The Case For Coram Nobis, Douglas J. Bench Jr.
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Occasionally, criminals correctly interpret the law while courts err. Litigation pursuant to the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) includes numerous examples. The ACCA imposes harsher sentences upon felons in possession of firearms with prior "violent felony" convictions. Over time, courts defined "violent" so contrary to its common meaning that it eventually came to encompass driving under the influence, unwanted touching, and the failure to report to correctional facilities. However, in a series of recent decisions, the Supreme Court has attempted to clarify the meaning of violent in the context of the ACCA and, in the process, excluded such offenses. …