Many issues in criminal procedure have complicated roots, and though the questions surrounding the issue of search and seizure are themselves complex, the Constitution's primary regulations regarding it can be found in a single amendment, the Fourth. The amendment states that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seiz…
Like books or songs, some constitutional amendments are more "popular"--i.e., they have been the subject of more Supreme Court cases--than others; and likewise amendments enjoy periods of greater or lesser attention from the legal community. The Fourteenth Amendment, for instance, has had several periods of enormous "popularity" since its adoption in 1868: in the late 1800s, it was used to protect…
The Fourth Amendment first came to prominence in an era of high regard for property rights, when a largely conservative Court in the late 1800s and early 1900s tended to rule in favor of business interests. Concerns over search and seizure entered a second phase during the 1960s, and this time the issue's champions were much further to the left politically. Perhaps the most important Fourth Amendm…
In the early 1990s, President Bill Clinton raised hackles among civil libertarians for his advocacy of routine searches of public housing, as well as "roving wiretaps"--the use of a warrant as a basis to tap all of a suspect's phones, rather than the one on which police had probable cause to believe they would obtain information of criminal activity. But reaction to these abrogations of Fourth Ame…
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