Fourth Amendment Commons^™

Bending Broken Rules: The Fourth Amendment Implications Of Full-Body Scanners In Preflight Screening, M. Madison Taylor

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

In the face of emerging technology, the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is especially susceptible to erosion. As Justice Scalia wrote in Kyllo v. United States, “[i]t would be foolish to contend that the degree of privacy secured to citizens by the Fourth Amendment has been entirely unaffected by the advance of technology.” In Katz v. United States, technology compelled a dramatic shift in the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Prior to Katz, the Court generally interpreted the Fourth Amendment to prevent only the search and seizure of tangible things, and looked to …

Constitutional Litigation Under Section 1983 And The Bivens Doctrine In The October 2008 Term, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

Section 1983 is the major enforcer of individual federal constitutional rights. It authorizes individuals to enforce their constitutional rights against state and local officials; for example,prison officers and police officers, and against municipalities. It is the most important civil statute in American law. To its credit, the United States Supreme Court understands the significance of § 1983.

For the past three decades, in virtually every single Term of theCourt, it has decided a substantial number of cases dealing with different facets of § 1983 litigation. Last Term, there was anunusual number of § 1983 decisions rendered by the United States …

Fourth Amendment Remedial Equilibration: A Comment On Herring V. United States And Pearson V. Callahan, David B. Owens

Articles

In two recent decisions, the Supreme Court addressed remedies under the Fourth Amendment by assuming that this remedial construction did not alter the value of the underlying right meant to be protected by the Constitution. First, in Herring v. United States, the court broadened exceptions to the exclusionary rule and implied that suppression may not be required for "negligent" errors generally. Then, in Pearson v. Callahan, the Court abandoned it's "battle-of-order" rule - which required courts to consider the right before inquiring whether that right was "clearly established" at the time of the violation - when considering qualified …

Veteran Police Officers And Three-Dollar Steaks: The Subjective/Objective Dimensions Of Probable Cause And Reasonable Suspicion, Kit Kinports

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses two issues surrounding probable cause and reasonable suspicion that test the line between subjective and objective standards in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: the extent to which a particular police officer’s training and experience ought to be considered in measuring probable cause and reasonable suspicion, and the relevance of the officer’s subjective beliefs about the presence of a weapon in assessing the reasonable suspicion required to justify a frisk. Although both questions have split the lower courts and remain unresolved by the Supreme Court, the majority of courts treat them inconsistently, recognizing the importance of an officer’s training, experience, …

Substitution Effects: A Problematic Justification For The Third-Party Doctrine Of The Fourth Amendment, Blake Ellis Reid

Publications

In the past half-century, the Supreme Court has crafted a vein of jurisprudence virtually eliminating Fourth Amendment protection in information turned over to third parties - regardless of any subjective expectation of privacy or confidentiality in the information on the part of the revealer. This so-called “third-party” doctrine of the Fourth Amendment has become increasingly controversial in light of the growing societal reliance on the Internet in the United States, where nearly every transaction requires a user to turn information over to at least one third party: the Internet service provider (“ISP”).

Citing the scholarship that has criticized the third-party …