Tag: Fourth Amendment

The Inviolate Home: Housing Exceptionalism in the Fourth Amendment

Stephanie M. Stern - Chicago-Kent College of Law

The notion of the inviolate home and the paramount importance of constraining government search of the home are cherished tenets of constitutional law and scholarship.  The doctrinal solicitude and judicial rhetoric surrounding the home reflect a belief that residential privacy rights are both psychologically and politically vital.  This “housing exceptionalism”… Read More »

Applying the Fourth Amendment to the Internet: A General Approach

Orin Kerr

This Article proposes a general approach to applying the Fourth Amendment to the Internet. It assumes that courts will try to apply the Fourth Amendment to the Internet so that the Fourth Amendment has the same basic function online that it has offline. The Article reaches two major conclusions. First,… Read More »

The New Silver Platter: How Today’s Police Are Serving up Potentially Tainted Evidence Without Even Revealing the Search that Produced It to Defendants or to Courts

Micah Block

Imagine the following scenario: A police officer is investigating a major drug trafficking ring. She obtains a wiretap on the cell phone of the suspected kingpin of the organization. The wiretap enables her to overhear conversations between the top target of the wiretap and several other people in the drug… Read More »

Fourth Amendment Remedial Equilibration: A Look at Herring v. United States and Pearson v. Callahan

David Owens

The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures . . . .” But, this amendment has long been steeped in controversy, especially when it comes to determining how to enforce it—by exclusionary rule requiring suppression of unlawfully-obtained evidence, civil… Read More »

Wiretapping Before the Wires: The Post Office and the Birth of Communications Privacy

Anuj C. Desai Anuj C. Desai is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin.

As the new President faces a whole host of civil liberties issues upon taking office, one that looms large is communications privacy.  Still unresolved from the previous administration are the legality of President Bush’s so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program (the National Security Agency surveillance program code-named “Stellar Wind” that was first… Read More »