Fourth Amendment Commons^™

What Is The Scope Of Searches Of Cell Phones Incident To Arrest? United States V. Wurie And The Return Of Chimel, Benjamin J. Wahrer

Maine Law Review

Americans can potentially be arrested for hundreds of nonviolent, minor offenses In fact in 2012, nearly 1 out of every 25 Americans was arrested. Alarmingly, this figure is even higher among youths, with 1 out of every 3 expected to be arrested at least once by the time they turn 23. Once played under arrest, an individual’s expectation of privacy is severely reduced and law enforcement personnel traditionally have broad authority to search and seize anything found on the arrestee’s person, no matter the nature of the arresting crime. For example, it is well-settled law that the arresting officer may …

Local Law Enforcement Jumps On The Big Data Bandwagon: Automated License Plate Recognition Systems, Infomation Privacy, And Access To Government Information, Bryce Clayton Newell

Maine Law Review

As government agencies and law enforcement departments increasingly adopt big-data surveillance technologies as part of their routine investigatory practice, personal information privacy concerns are becoming progressively more palpable. On the other hand, advancing technologies and data-mining potentially offer law enforcement greater ability to detect, investigate, and prosecute criminal activity. These concerns (for personal information privacy and the efficacy of law enforcement) are both very important in contemporary society. On one view, American privacy law has not kept up with advancing technological capabilities, and government agencies have arguably begun to overstep the acceptable boundaries of information access, violating the privacy of …

Reason And Reasonableness: The Necessary Diversity Of The Common Law, Frederic G. Sourgens

Maine Law Review

This Article addresses the central concept of “reasonableness” in the common law and constitutional jurisprudence. On the basis of three examples, the common law of torts, the common law of contracts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Article notes that different areas of the law follow fundamentally inconsistent utilitarian, pragmatic, and formalist reasonableness paradigms. The significance of this diversity of reasonableness paradigms remains largely under-theorized. This Article submits that the diversity of reasonableness paradigms is a necessary feature of the common law. It theorizes that the utilitarian, pragmatic and formalistic paradigms are structural elements driving the common law norm-generation process. This …

Knock And Talk No More, Jamesa J. Drake

Maine Law Review

The Supreme Court has set out a roadmap for challenging one of the most common and insidious police tactics used today: the knock-and-talk. The path is short and clear and it leads to the inescapable conclusion that the knock-and-talk—as it is actually employed in practice—is unconstitutional. Although the Court has yet to squarely consider the issue, some Justices have already taken pains to say, in dictum, that knock-and-talks are lawful. Practitioners should not be dissuaded. What this faction of the Court describes is a highly romanticized—and utterly inaccurate—conception of what a knock-and-talk actually entails. The sort of activity that these …

Riley And Abandonment: Expanding Fourth Amendment Protection Of Cell Phones, Abigail Hoverman

Northwestern University Law Review

In light of the privacy concerns inherent to personal technological devices, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in 2014 recognizing the need for categorical heightened protection of cell phones during searches incident to arrest in Riley v. California. This Note argues for expansion of heightened protections for cell phones in the context of abandoned evidence because the same privacy concerns apply. This argument matters because state and federal courts have not provided the needed protection to abandoned cell phones pre- or post-Riley.

Is Wifi Worth It: The Hidden Dangers Of Public Wifi, Ellie Shahin

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Autonomous Cars: Navigating The Patchwork Of Data Privacy Laws That Could Impact The Industry, Anthony Jones

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Commodifying Policing: A Recipe For Community-Police Tensions, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

This Article, in Part II, begins with a description of how municipalities, at least since the recession of 2008, have fallen short of fully funding their departments. Part III focuses on four distinct outside funding components and their impact on policing. The first subsection discusses asset forfeitures, under both state and federal law. Subsection two highlights revenue derived from citations, often in the form of traffic tickets. A discussion of fees that are being added to fines, often to fund courts, probation agencies, and police departments, follows. The increasing amounts and types of fees imposed have substantially increased the burden …

Biometric Cyberintelligence And The Posse Comitatus Act, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

This Article addresses the rapid growth of what the military and the intelligence community refer to as “biometric-enabled intelligence.” This newly emerging intelligence tool is reliant upon biometric databases—for example, digitalized storage of scanned fingerprints and irises, digital photographs for facial recognition technology, and DNA. This Article introduces the term “biometric cyberintelligence” to more accurately describe the manner in which this new tool is dependent upon cybersurveillance and big data’s massintegrative systems.

This Article argues that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, designed to limit the deployment of federal military resources in the service of domestic policies, will be difficult …

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 …

Body Worn Cameras With Facial Recognition Technology: When It Constitutes A Search, Kelly Blount

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.

The Benefits Outweigh The Costs: Illinois Should Apply State Exclusionary Rule As Remedy For Article I Section 6 Violations, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 397 (2017), Nicholas J. Kamide

UIC Law Review

This comment will argue that Illinois courts (1) are not restricted by their own judicially imposed lockstep doctrine from applying the exclusionary rule based on Article I Section 6 ("state exclusionary rule" herein); and (2) should specifically apply the state exclusionary rule as the remedy for Fourth Amendment violations (and Article I section 6 violations) instead of the exclusionary rule based on the language of the Fourth Amendment ("federal exclusionary rule" herein), which currently offers Illinois residents, and specifically criminal defendants, less constitutional protection.

Reviving The Fourth Amendment: Reasonable Expectation Of Privacy In A Cell Phone Age, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 555 (2017), Marisa Kay

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Extraterritorial Constitutionalism: A Rule Proposed, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 787 (2017), Joseph Alfe

UIC Law Review

Does the Fourth Amendment apply in cases of cross-border shootings of foreign nationals, when those shots were fired by United States Border Patrol agents from American soil, striking a victim in Mexico? In oral argument, Petitioner failed to heed the trail of breadcrumbs strewn at his feet by inquisitive Supreme Court Justices. A workable, yet narrow rule that would plug the critically important gap in application of the United States Constitution to remedy such cross-border atrocities, was not articulated. I propose one here. The world’s busiest border is that which is shared between the United States and Mexico. Our countries …

Recent Development: Sellman V. State: Absent Additional Circumstances, Consent To A Vehicle Search In A High Crime Area Does Not Create Reasonable Suspicion To Justify A Terry Frisk Of A Passenger Who Displays Nervous Behavior; Theft From A Vehicle Does Not Automatically Infer That An Individual Is Armed, Ashley N. Simmons

University of Baltimore Law Forum

The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that, under the totality of the circumstances, a law enforcement officer did not have reasonable suspicion to conduct a Terry frisk of a passenger during a traffic stop. Sellman v. State, 449 Md. 526, 544, 144 A.3d 771, 782 (2016). The court ruled that a police department policy authorizing officers to conduct Terry frisks based on consent to search a vehicle violates the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 557, 144 A.3d at 790. The court further held that the crime of theft from vehicles does not imply the possession of a deadly weapon. Id. …

Who Let The Dogs Out—And While We’Re At It, Who Said They Could Sniff Me?: How The Unregulated Street Sniff Threatens Pedestrians’ Privacy Rights, Jacey Lara Gottlieb

Brooklyn Law Review

The Fourth Amendment affords United States citizens the right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Throughout the last two centuries, the Supreme Court has developed extensive case law that has created a somewhat formulaic approach to determining whether one’s Fourth Amendment rights have been violated—namely, the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test. The Court has applied this test to afford the home, vehicle, airport, and the pedestrian all varying levels of privacy rights, and has upheld most of these respective levels of privacy in the context of the police canine sniff. The …

Cloudy With A Chance Of Abused Privacy Rights: Modifying Third-Party Fourth Amendment Standing Doctrine Post-Spokeo, Sarah E. Pugh

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Scholars Of The History And Original Meaning Of The Fourth Amendment As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner: Carpenter V. United States, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

Law enforcement officials wanted to learn where Petitioner Timothy Carpenter was at the time of certain robberies. To figure that out, they obtained records from his cellular service provider showing the movements of his cell phone. Examining those records, they were able to track Carpenter’s whereabouts over a four-month period. Obtaining and examining those records was a “search” in any normal sense of the word—a search of documents and a search for Carpenter and one of his personal effects. It was therefore a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. When the Amendment was ratified, to “search” meant to …

Constitutional Law—Fourth Amendment Search And Seizure—We've Got Ourselves In A Pickle: The Supreme Court Of Arkansas's Recent Expansion Of Fourht Amendment Rights May Have Unintended Consequences. Pickle V. State, 2015 Ark. 286, 466 S.W. 3d 410, Ben Honaker

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Arkansas Airspace Ownership And The Challenge Of Drones, Lindsey P. Gustafson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.