Fourth Amendment Commons^™

Dobbs Was Wrong: The Liberty To Choose To Give Birth Should Be Federally Protected, Alysa J. Wiggins

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of United States V. Morta: Refining The Application Of The Other-Indicia Approach To Criminal-Alias Mail, Nicholas Manning

Pepperdine Law Review

Americans who use their legal names to send and receive mail through traditional postal services have long maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy in that mail under the Fourth Amendment. Courts have also recognized that even those who use aliases with traditional postal services have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their mail. But circuit courts have split over whether Americans who use aliases in mail purely for criminal purposes—such as sending or receiving drugs—should have that same expectation of privacy. More specifically, courts disagree over the correct approach to analyze a defendant’s criminal-alias mail for purposes of Fourth Amendment …

Dude, Where’S My Data? A Legislative Band-Aid For Data Brokers’ Bullet Hole In Consumer Privacy Protection, Emily Bushman

Catholic University Law Review

The development and proliferation of the Internet, GPS, cell phones, social media, and the associated data that support these now ubiquitous technologies have created a new ecosystem of information making up a person’s digital identity. Our digital footprints have traditionally been subject to different levels of privacy protection depending upon the kind of data at issue. Over time, court decisions have revealed tensions and a lack of consistency on the question of how the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment apply to an individual’s digital footprint and their reasonable expectations of privacy over it. This Comment will examine the gaps …

Going Cashless: Privacy Implications For Gun Control In A Digital Economy, Liza Goldenberg

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This paper will examine how, given the United States’ shift toward a cashless economy, the country’s top credit-card companies’ potential decision to implement a new merchant code for firearm-related transactions as a method of gun control will backfire, jeopardizing consumer privacy and leading to unregulated transactions through cryptocurrencies. Since the majority of gun violence stems from firearm transactions not involving credit cards, credit-card companies should abandon the new merchant code that dissuades Americans from exercising their fundamental rights. The American economy should focus on slowing the shift toward a digital economy so that federal and state governments can implement legislation …

Computationally Assessing Suspicion, Wesley M. Oliver, Morgan A. Gray, Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Law enforcement officers performing drug interdiction on interstate highways have to decide nearly every day whether there is reasonable suspicion to detain motorists until a trained dog can sniff for the presence of drugs. The officers’ assessments are often wrong, however, and lead to unnecessary detentions of innocent persons and the suppression of drugs found on guilty ones. We propose a computational method of evaluating suspicion in these encounters and offer experimental results from early efforts demonstrating its feasibility. With the assistance of large language and predictive machine learning models, it appears that judges, advocates, and even police officers could …

Civil Liability For Autonomous Police Robots: The Inadequacy Of § 1983 In Responding To Robot Excessive Force, Robert Sassan

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

In the fall of 2023, New York City announced its plan to deploy an autonomous police robot, called K5, to patrol the Times Square subway station. Mayor Eric Adams touted the initiative as a cost-saving measure— K5 costs less per hour than a human patrol officer. But K5 was by no means a replacement for a human. It was effectively a security camera on wheels. K5 could be used to call for help but could not otherwise intervene in an emergency, and it was not capable of using force to respond to a threat. But in the not-so-distant future, autonomous …

Computationally Assessing Suspicion, Wesley M. Oliver

Law Faculty Publications

Law enforcement officers performing drug interdiction on interstate highways have to decide nearly every day whether there is reasonable suspicion to detain motorists until a trained dog can sniff for the presence of drugs. The officers’ assessments are often wrong, however, and lead to unnecessary detentions of innocent persons and the suppression of drugs found on guilty ones. We propose a computational method of evaluating suspicion in these encounters and offer experimental results from early efforts demonstrating its feasibility. With the assistance of large language and predictive machine learning models, it appears that judges, advocates, and even police officers could …

The Mosaic Theory In Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence: The Last Bastion Of Privacy In A Camera-Surveilled World, Auggie Alvarado

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Good Policing Practices Are Difficult, Even For The Avengers, Melanie Reid

Cleveland State Law Review

Policing, as a topic, is complicated. Many have strong views as to what police should or should not be doing and how effectively they are doing it. Too often policing has become polarized with various perspectives disagreeing as to the future of policing. Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, and Policing Abolition movements are on one spectrum compared to the Blue Lives Matter Movement or other mayoral or police union initiatives. This is clearly a time to collaborate and learn from the various perspectives to bring hope and change in the future. Lawyers, academics, community members, and police officers alike …

The Post-Dobbs Reality: Privacy Expectations For Period-Tracking Apps In Criminal Abortion Prosecutions, Sophie L. Nelson

Pepperdine Law Review

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in June 2022 was met with waves of both support and criticism throughout the United States. Several states immediately implemented or began drafting trigger laws that criminalize seeking and providing an abortion. These laws prompted several period-tracking app companies to encrypt their users’ data to make it more difficult for the government to access period- and pregnancy-related information for criminal investigations. This Comment explores whether the Fourth Amendment and U.S. privacy statutes protect users of period-tracking apps from government surveillance. More specifically, this Comment argues that …

Pretrial Commitment And The Fourth Amendment, Laurent Sacharoff

Notre Dame Law Review

Today, the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause governs arrest warrants and search warrants only. But in the founding era, the Warrant Clause governed a third type of warrant: the “warrant of commitment.” Judges issued these warrants to jail defendants pending trial. This Article argues that the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause, with its oath and probable cause standard, should be understood today to apply to this third type of warrant. That means the Warrant Clause would govern any initial appearance where a judge first commits a defendant—a process that currently falls far short of fulfilling its constitutional and historical function. History supports …

Intellectual Property And The Myth Of Nonrivalry, James Y. Stern

Notre Dame Law Review

The concept of rivalry is central to modern accounts of property. When one per-son’s use of a resource is incompatible with another’s, a system of rights to determine its use may be necessary. It is commonly asserted, however, that informational goods like inventions and expressive works are nonrivalrous and that intellectual property rights must therefore be subject to special limitation, if they should even exist at all. This Article examines the idea of rivalry more closely and makes a series of claims about the analysis of rivalrousness for purposes of such arguments. Within that frame-work, it argues that rivalry should …

Barcoding Bodies: Rfid Technology And The Perils Of E-Carceration, Jackson Samples

Duke Law & Technology Review

Electronic surveillance now plays a central role in the criminal legal system. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are tracked by ankle monitors and smartphone technology. And frighteningly, commentators and policymakers have now proposed implanting radio frequency identification (“RFID”) chips into people’s bodies for surveillance purposes. This Note examines the unique risks of these proposals—particularly with respect to people on probation and parole—and argues that RFID implants would constitute a systematic violation of individual privacy and bodily integrity. As a result, they would also violate the Fourth Amendment.

Big Data Searches And The Future Of Criminal Procedure, Mary Fan

Articles

This Article proceeds in three parts. Part I illuminates the nostalgic Luddism that influences Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and the challenges posed by evolving technologies to this dominant lens. This Part explains the operation of geofence and keyword warrants and how their power to crack cold cases by unidentified perpetrators both tempt and terrify. The confusion in the courts over the constitutionality of geofence and keyword warrants is emblematic of the larger challenges of the Romantic Luddism in Fourth Amendment originalism that has grown in influence over the decades.

Part II frames and theorizes the concepts of collateral impact and collateral …

Skirting The Fourth Amendment: How Law Enforcement Agencies Abuse Technology And Constitutional Exceptions To Surveille The Public, Matthew Lloyd

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Existing Fourth Amendment law does not protect against law enforcement use of data gathered through the internet either by private companies who actively search their customer’s data and submit evidence of misconduct to law enforcement or from private companies who acquire the data on behalf of law enforcement. In an effort to pursue criminals, courts have permitted Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to develop in a manner that permits sweeping invasions of privacy without any probable cause through the private search doctrine or without any procedural protections through the third-party doctrine. It will require substantial judicial or legislative action to return the …

Circumventing The Fourth Amendment: The Unconstitutional Nature Of Geofence Warrants, Shelby Stender

Utah Law Review

Federal and state law enforcement agencies are using a new tactic for gathering evidence: geofence warrants. These warrants allow law enforcement to gather historical location data collected by third party companies including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple. Armed with a geofence warrant today, law enforcement agencies can track the previous location of an individual at any point from the moment they acquired a cell phone—so long as the location history is turned on. The tactic has grown in popularity since 2019 and has been used to uncover suspects in cases where police had few leads. Troublingly though, the tactic has …

Ohio’S Failure To Protect Motorcyclists' Heads: A Law Enforcement Perspective, B. Thomas

Et Cetera

As a former police officer, the aftereffects of helmetless motorcycle crashes will forever haunt me. This Article discusses the need for helmet laws for all motorcyclists.

Filling The Potholes Of Pretextual Traffic Stops: A Better Road Forward For Ohio, Jordan Weeks

Cleveland State Law Review

The Fourth Amendment was one of the driving forces behind the United States Revolution. This Amendment generally protects individuals against “unreasonable” searches and seizures. But what does “reasonable” mean in the context of a traffic stop?

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court in Whren v. United States tried answering this question. In so doing, the Court determined that pretextual traffic stops are “reasonable.” Pretextual traffic stops occur where an officer stops a vehicle and cites a lawful reason for the stop, yet the underlying reason is unlawful. The Whren Court determined that an officer’s intent is completely irrelevant to whether …

Arrests: Legal And Illegal, Daniel Yeager

Georgia State University Law Review

The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. An arrest—manifesting a police intention to transport a suspect to the stationhouse for booking, fingerprinting, and photographing—is a mode of seizure. Because arrests are so intrusive, they require roughly a fifty percent chance that an arrestable offense has occurred. Because nonarrest seizures (aka Terry stops), though no “petty indignity,” are less intrusive than arrests, they require roughly just a twenty-five percent chance that crime is afoot.

Any arrest not supported by probable cause is illegal. It would therefore seem to follow that any arrest supported by probable cause is legal. But it …

Eavesdropping, The Fourth Amendment, And The Common Law (Of Eavesdropping), Donald A. Dripps

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article addresses two of the most momentous and controversial issues raised by the Fourth Amendment. These issues are closely related but distinct. First, is eavesdropping a “search” subject to the Fourth Amendment? Second, are Fourth Amendment “searches” limited to the interests against physical intrusion protected by the common-law torts of trespass and false arrest?

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Remarkably, the debate about the Fourth Amendment, the common law, and eavesdropping has almost completely ignored the common law of eavesdropping. This Article is the first to consider the Fourth Amendment in light of an in-depth examination of the common law’s prohibition of …