The Fourth Amendment and Airports (2016) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 4-17
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From page 4... ...
4section explains that when the government conducts a valid administrative search, it discovers information lawfully, and once information is lawfully known it can also be used by law enforcement officers to investigate suspected wrongdoing. Section IV then reviews how the courts consider administrative searches that are not valid.
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From page 5... ...
5For example, the courts generally note that individuals seek to secure privacy in their homes, but if an individual makes home activities visible to the public, he or she has not sought to preserve privacy and the Fourth Amendment does not provide protections.10 Thus, the courts have held that a government observation made from a public space, such as from a public thoroughfare or from an aircraft in public airspace, is not a search under the Fourth Amendment because what a person knowingly exposes to the public is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.11 If an individual has made efforts to secure privacy, the Court then inquires whether the individual's expectation of privacy is "one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable."12 The Court typically begins this analysis by considering the property listed in the Fourth Amendment to be "encompassed by its protections: persons, houses, papers, and effects."13 This list of protected things "establishes a simple baseline, one that for much of our history formed the exclusive basis for its protections: When ‘the Government obtains information by physically intruding' on persons, houses, papers, or effects, ‘a "search" within the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment' has ‘undoubtedly occurred.'"14 Thus, many early Fourth Amendment cases focus extensively on property law concepts, such as trespass and licenses to use property.15 The Court has noted that an alignment between the laws of property and privacy is not surprising. "The law of property ‘naturally enough influence[s]
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From page 6... ...
6The amendment thus protects a right to secure personal privacy in a manner that society accepts as reasonable against unreasonable government intrusions, and it states baseline properties where such an expectation is accepted. Societal expectations of privacy "add to the baseline," but they do "not subtract anything from the Amendment's protections ‘when the Government does engage in [a]
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From page 7... ...
7The Supreme Court uses several tests to evaluate what is reasonable. Initially, the Court will look "to the statutes and common law of the founding era to determine the norms that the Fourth Amendment was meant to preserve" when assessing whether current practices provide those historic protections.38 If this historical analysis does not give the Court "a conclusive answer" concerning what is reasonable, however, the Court then analyzes the government's action "in light of traditional standards of reasonableness ‘by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it [the action]
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From page 8... ...
8obtaining or executing a warrant, investigating wrongdoing in the field, or implementing a regulatory inspection program.
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9requirement is one of the "fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law."66 The function served by setting standards in a warrant is so important that the Court considers a warrantless search "per se unreasonable," unless the Fourth Amendment does not apply or the circumstances fall within a recognized exception (and thus the government's actions are limited in some other manner) .67 The Supreme Court has determined "that in most instances failure to comply with the warrant requirement can only be excused by exigent circumstances."68 In such circumstances, the "standards applicable to the factual basis supporting the officer's probable-cause assessment at the time of the challenged arrest and search are at least as stringent as the standards applied with respect to the magistrate's assessment."69 The law favors a magistrate's assessment.
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From page 10... ...
10 surrounding the encounter, the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that he was not at liberty to ignore the police presence and go about his business."78 This is an objective test. It does not rely on the motivation of the officers, but on "how their actions would reasonably be understood."79 The Supreme Court has noted examples of when police conduct may be understood as detaining (and thus seizing)
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From page 11... ...
11 often forced to make split-second judgments -- in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving -- about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation."93 A "‘seizure' of property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interests in that property,"94 such as when the government takes "dominion and control" over a package for the government's own purposes.95 The Supreme Court has noted that "[d] ifferent interests are implicated by a seizure than by a search.
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From page 12... ...
12 F Exigent Circumstances Generally The Supreme Court recognizes that sometimes exigent circumstances call for limited but immediate action by the government, and when the exigency justifies the action taken, the Court recognizes these circumstances as an exception that complies with the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement.
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From page 13... ...
13 G Administrative Actions Generally The Supreme Court recognizes that searches and seizures conducted pursuant to an administrative program can constitute an exception if they satisfy the protective standards embodied in the Fourth Amendment.
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From page 14... ...
14 generates less concern because the checkpoint is visible and less likely to frighten those passing by.131 The Court has also noted that these standardized roadblock operations are "markedly different from roving patrols, where the unbridled discretion of officers in the field could result in unlimited interference with motorists' use of the highways."132 Although regulatory procedures can act as a substitute for the Fourth Amendment's warrant and probable cause requirements, administrative search programs must still meet the amendment's standards for reasonableness. The Supreme Court examines their reasonableness at the programmatic level: Under the totality of the circumstances, it balances the government's needs for the administrative action taken against the privacy concerns that the program intrudes upon.
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From page 15... ...
15 advancing some other purpose.144 The Fourth Amendment exception does "not apply where the officer's purpose is not to attend to the special needs or to the investigation for which the administrative inspection is justified."145 When an administrative search is validly conducted, any information discovered (such as contraband or evidence of a crime) is lawfully known to the government, and thus law enforcement officers can investigate it using measures that the Fourth Amendment requires to justify law enforcement action.146 The Supreme Court has ruled on the validity of administrative programs in a number of contexts.
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16 exceptions essentially consider whether information that is material to the prosecution was obtained unreasonably and a conviction would rely on a Fourth Amendment violation. Among the exceptions to the rule, the Court considers issues of police good faith (or bad faith)
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From page 17... ...
17 not have the effect of perpetuating a Fourth Amendment violation. This exception does not focus on whether there is a causal relationship: [E]
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