Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Federal judges are short-circuiting the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures

From the Washington Examiner:
Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and his clerk Stephanie Grace have written an opinion piece about the demise of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution subtitled “How technology helped make the Fourth Amendment obsolete.”

Based on Judge Kozinski’s reputation as a fine even libertarian jurist, I thought before reading the article it might be a mea or noster (our) culpa on behalf of the American judiciary, which over the past century has issued opinion after opinion destroying the force of the Fourth Amendment as a restraint on government.

I had hoped Judge Kozinski, a Ronald Reagan appointee, would have recited how judges have upheld government searches without citing to the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of warrants issued only after someone, under oath and affirmation, provided probable cause.

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