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2 books match the query 'Searches and seizures'
The Fourth Amendment
Original Understandings and Modern PolicingMichael J.Z. Mannheimer
University of Michigan Press, 2023
Police are required to obey the law. While that seems obvious, courts have lost track of that requirement due to misinterpreting the two constitutional provisions governing police conduct: the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fourth Amendment forbids "unreasonable searches and seizures" and is the source of most constitutional constraints on policing. Although that provision technically applies only to the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, has been deemed to apply the Fourth Amendment to the States.
This book contends that the courts’ misinterpretation of these provisions has led them to hold federal and state law enforcement mistakenly to the same constitutional standards. The Fourth Amendment was originally understood as a federalism, or “states’ rights,” provision that, in effect, required federal agents to adhere to state law when searching or seizing. Thus, applying the same constraint to the States is impossible. Instead, the Fourteenth Amendment was originally understood in part as requiring that state officials (1) adhere to state law, (2) not discriminate, and (3) not be granted excessive discretion by legislators. These principles should guide judicial review of modern policing. Instead, constitutional constraints on policing are too strict and too forgiving at the same time. In this book, Michael J.Z. Mannheimer calls for a reimagination of what modern policing could look like based on the original understandings of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The Intruders
Unreasonable Searches and Seizures from King John to John AshcroftDash, Samuel
Rutgers University Press, 2004
What led to the Fourth Amendment’s protection of the people against unreasonable searches and seizures, codified in written law for the first time in history, and are we in danger of losing that protection? Celebrated lawyer Samuel Dash, known for his role as Chief Counsel of the Watergate Committee, explores the struggle for privacy. He does so by telling the dramatic tales of the people who were involved in influential legal battles, including landmark Supreme Court cases.
Covering almost eight-hundred years of history, Dash begins with the time of King John of England and the Magna Carta, then moves to colonial America as colonists resisted searches mandated under King George. These tensions contributed to the birth of the United States and the adoption of our Bill of Rights with its Fourth Amendment, protecting people against unreasonable searches and seizures.
How effective that protection has been is the story of the next two centuries. Dash explores U.S. Supreme Court cases through the sometimes humorous experiences of the people involved, including the unlucky gambler with a shoplifting wife and the police lieutenant turned king of bootleggers. To some extent, judicial safeguarding of Fourth Amendment protections depended on who made up the majority of the Court at any given time.
By 2001 a conservative majority of the Court had given law enforcement agents greater search powers than ever before. Dash challenges the legal justification of the Bush Administration’s grab for greater search, seizure, and wiretap powers after the 9/11 terrorists’ attacks. He reminds us of government abuses of power in prior emergencies in American history. For Dash, the best security is our belief in individual liberty and the enforcement of our Bill of Rights.