Katz as Originalism

The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test of Katz v. United States is a common target of attack by originalist Justices and originalist scholars. They argue that the Katz test for identifying a Fourth Amendment search should be rejected because it lacks a foundation in the Constitution’s text or original public meaning. This is not just an academic debate. The recent ascendancy of originalists to the Supreme Court creates a serious risk that the reasonable expectation of privacy test will be overturned and replaced by whatever an originalist approach might produce. This Article argues that originalist opposition to Katz is misplaced. Properly understood, the Katz test is consistent with both originalism and textualism. The reasonable expectation of privacy framework both accurately tracks the constitutional text and reflects a sound interpretation of its original public meaning. Instead of creating a constitutional free-for-all, the test merely preserves the original role of the Fourth Amendment against the threat of technological change. Ironically, the alternatives that originalist and textualist critics have proposed are either Katz in disguise or are less rooted in text and original public meaning than Katz itself. An originalist might want to restate Katz using the constitutional text. But that is a matter of form, not substance

Terms of Service and Fourth Amendment Rights

Almost everything you do on the Internet is governed by Terms of Service. The language in Terms of Service typically gives Internet providers broad rights to address potential account misuse. But do these Terms alter Fourth Amendment rights, either diminishing or even eliminating constitutional rights in Internet accounts? In the last five years, many courts have ruled that they do. These courts treat Terms of Service like a rights contract: by agreeing to use an Internet account subject to broad Terms of Service, you give up your Fourth Amendment rights. This Article argues that the courts are wrong. Terms of Service have little or no effect on Fourth Amendment rights. Fourth Amendment rights are rights against the government, not private parties. Terms of Service can define relationships between private parties, but private contracts cannot define Fourth Amendment rights. This is true across the range of Fourth Amendment doctrines, including the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, consent, abandonment, third-party consent, and the private search doctrine. Courts that have linked Terms of Service and Fourth Amendment rights are mistaken, and their reasoning should be rejected

The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment

In the Supreme Court\u27s recent decision on GPS surveillance, United States v. Jones, five justices authored or joined concurring opinions that applied a new approach to interpreting Fourth Amendment protection. Before Jones, Fourth Amendment decisions had always evaluated each step of an investigation individually. Jones introduced what we might call a mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment, by which courts evaluate a collective sequence of government activity as an aggregated whole to consider whether the sequence amounts to a search. This Article considers the implications of a mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment. It explores the choices and puzzles that a mosaic theory would raise, and it analyzes the merits of the proposed new method of Fourth Amendment analysis. The Article makes three major points. First, the mosaic theory represents a dramatic departure from the basic building block of existing Fourth Amendment doctrine. Second, adopting the mosaic theory would require courts to answer a long list of novel and challenging questions. Third, courts should reject the theory and retain the traditional sequential approach to Fourth Amendment analysis. The mosaic approach reflects legitimate concerns, but implementing it would be exceedingly difficult in light of rapid technological change. Courts can better respond to the concerns animating the mosaic theory within the traditional parameters of the sequential approach to Fourth Amendment analysis

Blogs and the Legal Academy

This paper\u27s focus is on today’s technology and ask whether blogs as we know them today are conducive to advancing scholarship. This paper\u27s conclusion is that relative to other forms of communication, blogs do not provide a particularly good platform for advancing serious legal scholarship. The blog format focuses reader attention on recent thoughts rather than deep ones. The tyranny of reverse chronological order limits the scholarly usefulness of blogs by leading the reader to the latest instead of the best. This doesn’t mean that blogs can’t advance scholarship. The impact of any blog depends on what its author decides to post. But the format of blogs makes it relatively hard to sustain a deep conversation about an important legal issue. As a result, blogs can play an important role in the dissemination and critique of scholarship, but, on the whole, they tend to provide lighter fare than other media. This paper suggests that blogs will probably have the greatest impact on legal scholarship at the student level: student scholarship published in law reviews has often focused on recent developments, and blogs may eventually usurp that role. This paper\u27s second point is that blogs provide a promising platform for law professors interested in being public intellectuals. Law professor blogs allow professors to participate in and influence broader debates on lawrelated topics. This role isn’t new, but it’s an interesting new spin on an old role. Blog posts have some important advantages over more traditional forms of public speech, such as op-eds, magazine articles, and TV or radio appearances. The opportunities aren’t specific to law professors, of course. Anyone can start a blog, and anyone can use a blog to become a public intellectual. But the legal field is particularly conducive to this kind of role, and law professors are in a good position to take advantage of it

Rethinking Patent Law in the Administrative State

This Article challenges the Supreme Court\u27s recent holding that administrative law doctrines should apply to the patent system. The Article contends that the dynamics ofpatent law derive not from public law regulation, but rather from the private law doctrines of contract, property, and tort. Based on this insight, the Article argues that administrative law doctrines such as Chevron and the Administrative Procedure Act should not apply within patent law, and that such doctrines in fact pose a serious threat to the proper functioning of the patent system