Computers, Urinals, and the Fourth Amendment: Confessions of a Patron Saint

At least the title indicates that the article is somehow concerned with the Fourth Amendment, though for anyone who knows me or is at all familiar with my work, that piece of information hardly would come as a revelation. The fact of the matter is that I almost always write about the Fourth Amendment; I am in an academic rut so deep as to deserve recognition in the Guinness Book World of Records. Search and seizure has been my cheval de bataille during my entire time as a law professor and even when I was a mere law student. And over that substantial period, I have peppered or salted - depending on your taste - the law reviews with a not insubstantial number of Fourth Amendment commentaries. Replowing the same ground for so long presents special challenges, which is why in recent years I have had to resort to grotesque phantasmagoria, polysyllabical sesquipedalianism, amphigoric analecta, and even serendipitous cyberspatial sciolism in an effort to present a fresh approach. But the other words in my title are less revealing. For example, who is this patron saint there referred to? It is me, as I discovered back in 1988 when, while digging through the advance sheets for Fourth Amendment minutiae, I discovered a case in which I was characterized as the patron saint of the Fourth Amendment. I rather liked that appellation and looked forward to springing it on my colleagues and friends at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately, in the intervening years I have never found just the right opportunity to work it into the conversation, which is why my sainthood has until now remained a deep, dark secret

Seizures Typology: Classifying Detentions of the Person to Resolve Warrant, Grounds, and Search Issues

This seizures typology constitutes a most important part of extant fourth amendment doctrine. The precision with which and perspective from which such classifications are drawn is obviously a matter of considerable interest to the police, who must in the first instance resolve these warrant, grounds, and search issues. It is also an appropriate subject of broader concern, as the shape of these categories has a critical bearing upon the effectiveness of our law enforcement processes and the extent of our protected liberty and privacy. The following comments are directed to this seizures typology

Controlling Discretion by Administrative Regulations: The Use, Misuse, and the Nonuse of Police Rules and Policies in Fourth Amendment Adjudication

In assaying fourth amendment jurisprudence, it is useful to take into account available knowledge regarding the actual search and seizure practices of the police. Especially helpful is the perspective afforded by the American Bar Foundation\u27s Survey of the Administration of Criminal Justice in the United States, which ranks as the preeminent empirical study of law enforcement procedures in this country. Despite the fact - or, more likely, because of the fact that the ABF Survey was published over twenty years ago, certain insights from that study highlight some recent and significant changes in this corpus juris inconstans . Clearly the most important single finding of the Survey was how hard it is to make accurate straightforward statements about criminal law administration because of the previously unperceived complexity · of that process. That complexity, the Survey established, attends activities of the police that implicate the fourth amendment. In deciding whether to make an arrest or other seizure of a person and whether to search for or seize property, the police are in actuality called upon to make decisions which are quite varied in their character and effect and which are influenced by a vast range of factors and considerations

Random Thoughts by a Distant Collaborator

A Tribute to Jerry Israe