The Fourth Amendment in the 21st Century
Over at NRO, Andrew McCarthy criticizes Rand Paul’s new legislation that provides that: 1. The collection of citizen’s phone records is a violation of the natural rights of every man and woman in the...
View ArticleThe Fourth Amendment in the 21st Century: The Modern Equivalent of Papers and...
One of the comments to my earlier post on the Fourth Amendment was interesting: These records are the modern equivalent of papers and effects. Excluding these records from the protection of the Fourth...
View ArticleBarnett on the NSA Data Seizure
Randy Barnett has an interesting op ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the NSA’s seizure of voluminous data on U.S. citizens was unconstitutional and that the approval of the seizure by the...
View ArticleThe Constitution is a Bill of Rights
My 10-year-old, fruit of my own loins, came home from fifth grade on Constitution Day to announce that his teacher could no longer demand his homework because the Fourth Amendment entitled him to be...
View ArticleReforming the NSA
Over at the NRO, Andrew McCarthy has an interesting column on the controversy about NSA. I hope to say something about the President’s review board at some point. McCarthy’s description of the members...
View ArticleMore on Andrew McCarthy and the Proposed NSA Reforms
In my prior post, I criticized Andrew McCarthy’s criticisms of the proposed reforms of the NSA programs. Here I offer a couple of additional thoughts on McCarthy’s criticisms. McCarthy argues that the...
View ArticlePredictive Policing and Probable Cause
The Verge has an insightful article on how the Chicago Police Department is using predictive policing as a means to identify individuals who are likely to be involved in a violent crime–they are placed...
View ArticlePredictive Policing and Probable Cause
The Verge has an insightful article on how the Chicago Police Department is using predictive policing as a means to identify individuals who are likely to be involved in a violent crime–they are placed...
View ArticleOriginalist Scholarship Relying on the Language of the Law–Part II
In our last post, we provided some examples of recent scholarship that rely on the view, which we have defended, that the Constitution is written in the language of law. They are not consistent with...
View ArticleThe Original Meaning of the Fourth Amendment: What Does “the Place to Be...
Lately, I have been exploring the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment, which I am finding to be a fascinating subject. The text of the Fourth Amendment is filled with significant interpretive...
View ArticleThe Legislative History of the Fourth Amendment: Unreasonable Searches and...
The Fourth Amendments has two main clauses: a rights clause and a prohibition on certain types of warrants clause (the prohibition clause): The right of the people to be secure in their persons,...
View ArticleThe Original Meaning and the Carpenter Case: “Their Papers”
The Carpenter v. United States case, which was argued before the Supreme Court earlier this week, may turn out to be one of the most important Fourth Amendment cases. One of the issues raised by the...
View ArticleThe Original Meaning and the Carpenter Case: Congress’s Protection of...
In my last post, I discussed the Fourth Amendment, the third party doctrine, and the Carpenter case (which involved information secured from a cell phone company about a consumer’s cell phone...
View ArticleThe Original Meaning and the Carpenter Case: Establishing Joint Ownership of...
In my last post, I discussed whether the federal statute conferring protection of customer cell phone information, including location information, is sufficient to render such information a paper or...
View ArticleThe Original Meaning and The Exclusionary Rule
In his recent concurrence in Collins v. Virginia, Justice Clarence Thomas argues that the exclusionary rule for Fourth Amendment violations should not be applied against the states. He states that...
View ArticleOriginalism, the Fourth Amendment, and New Technology
One of the important issues for originalism is whether it can be applied to new circumstances that were not envisioned at the time of the original Constitution. Perhaps this issue is encountered most...
View ArticleApplying the Fourth Amendment’s Original Meaning to Cell Phones and Heat Sensors
How should the Fourth Amendment’s original meaning be applied to modern technology that was not in existence at the time of the Amendment’s enactment? Many commentators believe this type of question...
View ArticleWhat’s in Your Wallet?
To help foot the bill for the “Build Back Better” budget reconciliation bill—originally slated to cost $3.5 trillion—the Biden administration proposed an unprecedented measure for collecting revenue:...
View ArticleDoes Common Law Survive the “Age of Statutes”?
Is forty years too far along for a book review? Another look at A Common Law for the Age of Statutes by eminent Second Circuit Judge and Yale Law professor Guido Calabresi suggests no. Published in...
View Article
