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New law review article: "The Political Fourth Amendment"

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

Thomas P. Crocker, The Political Fourth Amendment, 88 Wash. U. L. Rev. 303 (2010). Abstract: The Political Fourth Amendment builds on Justice Ginsburg’s recent dissent in Herring v. United States to argue for a “more majestic conception” of the Fourth Amendment focused on protecting political liberty. To put the point dramatically, we misread the Fourth Amendment when we read it exclusively as a criminal procedure provision focused entirely on either regulating police or protecting privacy. In order to see the Fourth Amendment as contributing to the Constitution’s protections for political liberty, and not simply as an invitation to regulate police practice, we must take seriously the fact that the Fourth Amendment’s textual purpose is to secure a “right of the people,” which places it textually alongside the First, Second, and Ninth Amendments that similarly seek to protect the “right[s] of the people...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on February 23, 2011 (boomark / email).