Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Tied Up In Knotts? Gps And The Fourth Amendment, Renee Mcdonald Hutchins

Journal Articles

Judicial and scholarly assessment of emerging technology seems poised to drive the Fourth Amendment down one of three paths. The first would simply relegate the amendment to a footnote in history books by limiting its reach to harms that the framers specifically envisioned. A modified version of this first approach would dispense with expansive constitutional notions of privacy and replace them with legislative fixes. A third path offers the amendment continued vitality but requires the U.S. Supreme Court to overhaul its Fourth Amendment analysis. Fortunately, a fourth alternative is available to cabin emerging technologies within the existing doctrinal framework. Analysis …

Georgia V. Randolph: Whose Castle Is It, Anyway?, Lesley Mccall

University of Richmond Law Review

The Fourth Amendment protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures. Generally, a warrant is required to conduct a lawful search of a person's home, and a warrantless search is unreasonable per se. However, there are some exceptions to this requirement. A warrantless search is reasonable if police obtain voluntary consent from a person to search their home or effects. The Supreme Court has also recognized that a third party with common authority over a household may consent to a police search affecting an absent co-occupant. The Supreme Court of the United States recently addressed whether third party consent was effective …

Snoop Dogs: An Analysis Of Narcotics Canine Sniffs Of Storage Units Under The Fourth Amendment, Eugene D. Bryant

Georgia Law Review

A recent development in the nation's war on drugs is the increased use of narcotics canines to indiscriminately search storage facilities. Although the Fourth Amendment protects persons from unreasonable searches and seizures, the Supreme Court of the United States in U.S. v. Place deemed a canine sniff to be sui generis and not a "search"subject to analysis under the Fourth Amendment. With its decision in Illinois v. Caballes, the Court extended this analysis to canine sniffs outside of vehicles. Various state courts, in order to better protect the rights of state citizens, have rejected the Supreme Court's sui generis analysis …

How Earl Warren's Twenty-Two Years In Law Enforcement Affected His Work As Chief Justice, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Before becoming governor of California, Earl Warren had spent his entire legal career, twenty-two years, in law enforcement. Professor Kamisar maintains that this experience significantly influenced Warren's work as a Supreme Court justice and gave him a unique perspective into police interrogation and other police practices. This article discusses some of Warren's experiences in law enforcement and searches for evidence of that experience in Warren's opinions. For example, when Warren was head of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, he and his deputies not only relied on confessions in many homicide cases but also themselves interrogated homicide suspects. The seeds …

Unconstitutional Courses, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

By now, we almost expect Congress to fail. Nearly every time the federal courts announce a controversial decision, Congress issues a call to rein in "runaway" federal judges. And nearly every time Congress makes a "jurisdiction-stripping" threat, it comes to nothing.

But if Congress's threats possess little fire, we have still been distracted by their smoke. This Article argues that Congress's noisy calls have obscured another potent threat to the "judicial Power": the Supreme Court itself. On occasion, this Article asserts, the Court reshapes and abuses the "judicial Power"--not through bold pronouncements or obvious doctrinal revisions, but through something more …

The "Routine Traffic Stop" From Start To Finish: Too Much "Routine," Not Enough Fourth Amendment, Wayne R. Lafave

Michigan Law Review

Yale Kamisar, about which I have said too much elsewhere in this issue of the Review, could rightly be called "Mr. Confessions," for he has not only authored books and a host of articles on the subject of police interrogation, but for years has been printing Miranda cards in his basement and selling them to police departments all across the nation. Moreover, he may be the only law professor in the country who has both personally coerced a confession and had a confession coerced out of him. As Kamisar has himself noted, my own "intellectual sandbox" has been the …

Verdugo In Cyberspace: Boundaries Of Fourth Amendment Rights For Foreign Nationals In Cybercrime Cases, Stewart M. Young

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Comment examines the current legal framework governing Fourth Amendment rights for foreign nationals accused of committing crimes within the United States. Over the past three years, federal courts have tried several cases charging foreign nationals with committing crimes through the use of the Internet; these cases demonstrate a lack of clarity in the standard for warrant requirements regarding these searches. Utilizing these cases, this Comment creates a hypothetical case that presents the issues of Fourth Amendment rights for foreign nationals and seeks to determine how such a question should be answered. It advocates the clear application of United States …

Rhetorically Reasonable Police Practices: Viewing The Supreme Court's Multiple Discourse Paths, Kathryn R. Urbonya

Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes the United States Supreme Court's numerous and shifting rhetorical discourse paths for declaring whether particular governmental practices constituted unreasonable searches or seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It examines how the Court has manipulated classic discourse paths arising from text, history, precedent and structure. It reveals that among and within each of these categories, the Court has created conflicting approaches. The Article argues that the Court's construction of Fourth Amendment reasonableness has depended upon which discourse paths it has selected as well as how it has characterized the values embedded within the discourse …

Criminal Procedure: Searching High And Low For A Search In Kyllo: Justice Scalia Reaffirms Core Protections Of The Fourth Amendment, Scott Byrd

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Road Work: Racial Profiling And Drug Interdiction On The Highway, Samuel R. Gross, Katherine Y. Barnes

Michigan Law Review

Hypocrisy about race is hardly new in America, but the content changes. Recently the spotlight has been on racial profiling. The story of Colonel Carl Williams of the New Jersey State Police is a wellknown example. On Sunday, February 28, 1999, the Newark Star Ledger published a lengthy interview with Williams in which he talked about race and drugs: "Today . . . the drug problem is cocaine or marijuana. It is most likely a minority group that's involved with that. " Williams condemned racial profiling - "As far as racial profiling is concerned, that is absolutely not right. It …

The Fourth Amendment In The Hallway: Do Tenants Have A Constitutionally Protected Privacy Interest In The Locked Common Areas Of Their Apartment Buildings?, Sean M. Lewis

Michigan Law Review

One afternoon, a police officer spots a man driving a Cadillac through a run·down neighborhood. His interest piqued, the officer decides to follow the vehicle. The Cadillac soon comes to rest in front of an apartment building, and the driver, Jimmy Barrios-Moriera, removes a shopping bag from the trunk and enters the building. The moment Barrios-Moriera disappears within the doorway, the officer sprints after him because he knows that the door to the apartment building will automatically lock when it closes. He manages to catch the door just in time and rushes in. Barrios-Moriera is already halfway up a flight …

(E)Racing The Fourth Amendment, Devon W. Carbado

Michigan Law Review

It's been almost two years since I pledged allegiance to the United States of America - that is to say, became an American citizen. Before that, I was a permanent resident of America and a citizen of the United Kingdom. Yet, I became a black American long before I acquired American citizenship. Unlike citizenship, black racial naturalization was always available to me, even as I tried to make myself unavailable for that particular Americanization process. Given the negative images of black Americans on 1970s British television and the intra-racial tensions between blacks in the U.K. and blacks in America, I …

We Can Do This The Easy Way Or The Hard Way: The Use Of Deceit To Induce Consent Searches, Rebecca Strauss

Michigan Law Review

In October of 1995, Aaron Salvo was studying and living at Ashland College. College officials informed local FBI agents that they suspected Salvo of possible child molestation and related conduct based on incriminating electronic mail. FBI agents approached Salvo at his dormitory, asked to speak with him in private about the suspicious mail, and suggested they speak in Salvo's dorm room. Salvo agreed to speak with the officers, but declined to do so in his room because his roommate was there, and he did not want to get anyone else involved in the embarrassing nature of the upcoming conversation. Salvo …

Confessions, Search And Seizure, And The Rehnquist Court, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

About the time William Rehnquist ascended to the Chief Justiceship of the United States, two events occurred that increased the likelihood that Miranda would enjoy a long life.

In Moran v. Burbine, a six to three majority held that a confession preceded by an otherwise valid waiver of a suspect's Miranda rights should not be excluded either (1) because the police misled an inquiring attorney when they told her they were not going to question the suspect she called about or (2) because the police failed to inform the suspect of the attorney's efforts to reach him.

Although Burbine has …

The Writings Of John Barker Waite And Thomas Davies On The Search And Seizure Exclusionary Rule, Yale Kamisar

Articles

After browsing through many volumes of the Michigan Law Review, searching for the article I would discuss on the occasion of the law review's 100th anniversary, I wound up with two "finalists": a 1955 article by Professor John Barker Waite on the law of arrest search and seizure (on further reflection, four Michigan Law Review commentaries on the general subject written by Waite between 1933 and 1955)' and a monumental 200-page article (surely one of the longest articles ever to appear in the Michigan Law Review) by Thomas Davies on the "original Fourth Amendment. 2

When Constitutional Worlds Colide: Resurrecting The Framers' Bill Of Rights And Criminal Procedure, George C. Thomas Iii

Michigan Law Review

For two hundred years, the Supreme Court has been interpreting the Bill of Rights. Imagine Chief Justice John Marshall sitting in the dim, narrow Supreme Court chambers, pondering the interpretation of the Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process in United States v. Burr. Aaron Burr was charged with treason for planning to invade the Louisiana Territory and create a separate government there. To help prepare his defense, Burr wanted to see a letter written by General James Wilkinson to President Jefferson. In ruling on Burr's motion to compel disclosure, Marshall departed from the literal language of the Sixth Amendment - …

The Paths Not Taken: The Supreme Court's Failures In Dickerson, Paul G. Cassell

Michigan Law Review

Where's the rest of the opinion? That was my immediate reaction to reading the Supreme Court's terse decision in Dickerson, delivered to me via email from the clerk's office a few minutes after its release. Surely, I thought, some glitch in the transmission had eliminated the pages of discussion on the critical issues in the case. Yet, as it became clear that I had received all of the Court's opinion, my incredulity grew.

Miranda, Dickerson, And The Puzzling Persistence Of Fifth Amendment Exceptionalism, Stephen J. Schulhofer

Michigan Law Review

Dickerson v. United States preserves the status quo regime for judicial oversight of police interrogation. That result could be seen, in the present climate, as a victory for due process values, but there remain many reasons for concern that existing safeguards are flawed - that they are either too restrictive or not restrictive enough. Such concerns are partly empirical, of course. They depend on factual assessments of how much the Miranda rules do restrict the police. But such concerns also reflect a crucial, though often unstated, normative premise; they presuppose a certain view of how much the police should be …

Identifying And (Re)Formulating Prophylactic Rules, Safe Harbors, And Incidental Rights In Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Susan R. Klein

Michigan Law Review

The Miranda conundrum runs something like this. If the Miranda decision represents true constitutional interpretation, and all unwarned statements taken during custodial interrogation are "compelled" within the meaning of the Self-Incrimination Clause, the impeachment and "fruits" exceptions to Miranda should fall. If it is not true constitutional interpretation, than the Court has no business reversing state criminal convictions for its violation. I offer here what I hope is a satisfying answer to this conundrum, on both descriptive and normative levels, that justifies not only Miranda but a host of similar Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Court decisions as well. In Part …

Separated At Birth But Siblings Nonetheless: Miranda And The Due Process Notice Cases, George C. Thomas Iii

Michigan Law Review

Paraphrasing Justice Holmes, law is less about logic than experience. Courts and scholars have now had thirty-four years of experience with Miranda v. Arizona, including the Court's recent endorsement in Dickerson v. United States last Term. Looking back over this experience, it is plain that the Court has created a Miranda doctrine quite different from what it has said it was creating. I think the analytic structure in Dickerson supports this rethinking of Miranda. To connect the dots, I offer a new explanation for Miranda that permits us to reconcile Dickerson and the rest of the post-Miranda doctrine with the …

In The Stationhouse After Dickerson, Charles D. Weisselberg

Michigan Law Review

Miranda v. Arizona established the high water mark of the protections afforded an accused during a custodial interrogation. During the decades that followed, the United States Supreme Court allowed Miranda's foundation to erode, inviting a direct challenge to the landmark ruling. In Dickerson v. United States, the Court turned back such a challenge and placed Miranda upon a more secure, constitutional footing. This Article explores the impact of Dickerson in the place where Miranda was meant to matter most: the stationhouse. As I have described elsewhere, Supreme Court decisions have influenced a number of California law enforcement agencies to instruct …

Miranda'S Failure To Restrain Pernicious Interrogation Practices, Welsh S. White

Michigan Law Review

As Yale Kamisar's writings on police interrogation demonstrate, our simultaneous commitments to promoting law enforcement's interest in obtaining confessions and to protecting individuals from overreaching interrogation practices have created a nearly irreconcilable tension. If the police must be granted authority to engage in effective questioning of suspects, it will obviously be difficult to insure that "the terrible engine of the criminal law . . . not . . . be used to overreach individuals who stand helpless against it." If we are committed to accommodating these conflicting interests, however, some means must be found to impose appropriate restraints on the …

Miranda, The Constitution, And Congress, David A. Strauss

Michigan Law Review

Are Miranda warnings required by the Constitution, or not? If they are, why has the Supreme Court repeatedly said that the rights created by Miranda are "not themselves rights protected by the Constitution"? If not, why can't an Act of Congress, such as 18 U.S.C. 3501, declare them to be unnecessary? These were the central questions posed by United States v. Dickerson. It is not clear that the majority opinion ever really answered them. The majority said that "Miranda is constitutionally based," that Miranda has "constitutional underpinnings," that Miranda is "a constitutional decision," and that Miranda "announced a constitutional rule." …

Miranda'S Mistake, William J. Stuntz

Michigan Law Review

The oddest thing about Miranda is its politics - a point reinforced by the decision in, and the reaction to, Dickerson v. United States. In Dickerson, the Supreme Court faced the question whether Miranda ought to be overturned, either directly or by permitting legislative overrides. The lawyers, the literature, and the Court split along right-left - or, in the Court's case, right-center - lines, with the right seeking to do away with Miranda's restrictions on police questioning, and the left (or center) seeking to maintain them. The split is familiar. Reactions to Miranda have always divided along ideological lines, with …

Questioning The Relevance Of Miranda In The Twenty-First Century, Richard A. Leo

Michigan Law Review

Miranda v. Arizona is the most well-known criminal justice decision - arguably the most well-known legal decision - in American history. Since it was decided in 1966, the Miranda decision has spawned voluminous newspaper coverage, political and legal debate, and academic commentary. The Miranda warnings themselves have become so well-known through the media of television that most people recognize them immediately. As Patrick Malone has pointed out, the Miranda decision has added its own lexicon of words and phrases to the American language. Perhaps with this understanding in mind, George Thomas recently suggested that the Miranda warnings are more well-known …

Deceptive Police Interrogation Practices: How Far Is Too Far?, Laurie Magid

Michigan Law Review

Virtually all interrogations - or at least virtually all successful interrogations - involve some deception. As the United States Supreme Court has placed few limits on the use of deception, the variety of deceptive techniques is limited chiefly by the ingenuity of the interrogator. Interrogators still rely on the classic "Mutt and Jeff," or "good cop, bad cop," routine. Interrogators tell suspects that nonexistent eyewitnesses have identified them, or that still at-large accomplices have given statements against them. Interrogators have been known to put an unsophisticated suspect's hand on a fancy, new photocopy machine and tell him that the "Truth …

Establishing Inevitability Without Active Pursuit: Defining The Inevitable Discovery Exception To The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, Stephen E. Hessler

Michigan Law Review

Few doctrines of constitutional criminal procedure generate as much controversy as the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. Beyond the basic mandate of the rule - that evidence obtained in violation of an individual's right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure is inadmissible in a criminal proceeding - little else is agreed upon. The precise date of the exclusionary rule's inception is uncertain, but it has been applied by the judiciary for over eight decades. While the Supreme Court has emphasized that the rule is a "judicially created remedy," and not a "personal constitutional right," this characterization provokes argument as …

Healing The Blind Goddess: Race And Criminal Justice, Mark D. Rosenbaum, Daniel P. Tokaji

Michigan Law Review

Once again, issues of race, ethnicity, and class within our criminal justice system have been thrust into the public spotlight. On both sides of the country, in our nation's two largest cities, police are being called to account for acts of violence directed toward poor people of color. In New York City, a West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers, who fired forty-one bullets at the unarmed man as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building in a poor section of the Bronx. Did race influence the officers' decisions to fire the …

Supreme Court's 1998-1999 Term: Fourth Amendment Decisions, Kathryn R. Urbonya

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Adversity Of Race And Place: Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence In Illinois V. Wardlow, 528 S. Ct. 673 (2000), Adam B. Wolf

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Case Note lays out Wardlow's pertinent facts, describes the decisions of the Court and lower courts, and then analyzes the ramifications of the Court's holding. In particular, this Case Note argues that the Court's ruling recognizes substantially less Fourth Amendment protections for people of color and indigent citizens than for wealthy Caucasians. This perpetuates a cycle of humiliating experiences, as well as fear and mistrust of the police by many poor people of color.