Arc of 4th Amendment Jurisprudence
Key Questions:
- Does Fourth Amendment protects people or just places?
- What constitutes a “search”? A “seizure”?
- Government may not violate a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” What expectation is “reasonable”?
- Does Fourth Amendment violation require trespass?
- If there is no physical trespass AND no reasonable expectation of privacy, has the Fourth Amendment lost its relevance?
Cases:
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Carpenter v. United States (2018)
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Mosaic Theory
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United States v. Jones (2012)
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A car is an “effect” within the Fourth Amendment.
Installation and use of the GPS device constituted a “search.”
It was a “physical intrusion.”
It would have been recognized as a “common-law” trespass.
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Kyllo v. United States (2001)
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Where the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment "search," and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.
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California v. Ciraolo (1986)
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respondant has "knowingly exposed" his backyard to aerial observation, because all that was seen was visible to the naked eye from any aircraft flying overhead.
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Katz v. United States (1967)
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Katz Test:
first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and,
second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’
"What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.
But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
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Mapp v. Ohio (1967)
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Wolf v. Colorado (1949)
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Boyd v. United States (1886)
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