Law Commons^™

Policing "Bad" Mothers, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers — a speculative novel about a mother who abandons her child for a few hours and is required to attend a school for good mothers to regain custody — may not be a great book, but it is a good yarn, and a page turner, and thought-provoking. Thought-provoking, because to measure her fitness to be a mother, the protagonist is assigned a robot doppelganger of her child — one that is sentient, one that seems almost real, one that might even pass the Turing test, and one that she is required not only …

Fourth Amendment Fiduciaries, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Fordham Law Review

Fourth Amendment law is sorely in need of reform. To paraphrase Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in United States v. Jones, the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in information voluntarily shared with third-parties—the foundation of the widely reviled “third-party doctrine”—makes little sense in the digital age.

In truth, however, it is not just the third-party doctrine that needs retooling today. It is the Fourth Amendment’s general approach to the problem of “shared information.” Under existing law, if A shares information with B, A runs the risk of “misplaced trust”—the risk that B will disclose the information to law …

The Scope Of Police Questioning During A Routine Traffic Stop: Do Questions Outside The Scope Of The Original Justification For The Stop Create Impermissible Seizures If They Do Not Prolong The Stop? , Bill Lawrence

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The issue this Note addresses is whether a police officer, during a routine traffic stop, violates a person's Fourth Amendment rights when the officer's questions stray from the original reason for the stop. Resolution of the issue pits privacy concerns against the state's interest in effective law enforcement. With circuits split over the issue, and the Supreme Court not yet plainly ruling on it, this Note aims to provide a narrow solution to the problem.Part I explains the Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard and discusses the line of Supreme Court cases from Terry v. Ohio14 to Florida v. Bostick 5 that …

Power Not Reason: Justice Marshall's Valedictory And The Fourth Amendment In The Supreme Court's 1990 Term , Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In its 1990 Term, the United States Supreme Court heard five cases involving the Fourth Amendment. In this article, Professor Bruce Green analyzes these five search-and-seizure decisions in light of Justice Marshall's criticism that '[Plower, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decision-making." He examines the various considerations the Court advances in its Fourth Amendment analysis-interpretive principle, policy, and precedent--and discovers inconsistencies in the importance assigned to each of these considerations in a series of cases decided very close together by virtually the same Justices. Each approach controlled, Professor Green argues, only when it could be said to …

"Wrong But Reasonable": The Fourth Amendment Particularity Requirement After United States V. Leon, Martha Applebaum

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note analyzes the application of the good-faith exception to search warrant particularity violations under the Fourth Amendment. The question compelled by United States v. Leon and Massachusetts v. Sheppard is when, if ever, a particularity-defective warrant will sustain an officer's "reasonable reliance.'' The Note briefly discusses how "particularity" traditionally has been assessed under the fourth amendment. The author examines the Supreme Court's holding in Massachusetts v. Sheppard, and contrasts several circuit court cases that have applied Sheppard's "objectively reasonable" standard of good faith to warrants involving particularity defects. Finally, the Note concludes that the approach taken by the Second …

Warrantless Container Searches Under The Automobile And Search Incident Exceptions, Jody Cosgrove

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Warrantless searches of containers had historically been sustained under the exceptions to the fourth amendment protections developed for cases where exigent circumstances require immediate action. The Supreme Court of the United States then limited warantless container searches in United States v. Chadwick and Arkansas v. Sanders but these limitations were subject to various interpretations by the lower courts. This Note examines the various interpretations of these conflicts and their areas of conflict. It then argues for a strict interpretation of the Supreme Court limitations which is more consistent with the traditional exceptions to the fourth amendment's protections against unreasonable searches …