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- S.D.Fla.: Inventory that omitted “miscellaneous personal items” was not unreasonable
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- WSJ: ‘We Know You Live Right Here’: No Secrets in America’s New Surveillance Dragnet
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com
Search and Seizure (6th ed. 2025)
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-26,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 600,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 50,000 posts since 2003 (29,000 on WordPress as of 12/31/25) -
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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
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“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969) -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.”
– John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper -
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948) -
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
Website design by Wally Waller, Colorado Springs. 
Category Archives: SCOTUS
SCOTUSblog: Symposium: Whatever happens in US v. Microsoft, three themes will persist
SCOTUSblog: Symposium: Whatever happens in US v. Microsoft, three themes will persist
Reason: Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito Butt Heads Over the Fourth Amendment, Again
Reason: Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito Butt Heads Over the Fourth Amendment, Again by Damon Root: Gorsuch advances another property rights theory of the Fourth Amendment that Alito rejects.
SCOTUSblog: Argument analysis: Rental cars, reasonable expectations of privacy and property rights
SCOTUSblog: Argument analysis: Rental cars, reasonable expectations of privacy and property rights by Amy Howe. Transcripts: Byrd & Collins
Ginsburg has hired law clerks through term ending 6/30/20
ATL: Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: New Year, New Hires by David Lat And some justices have already hired all their 2019-2020 clerks as well.
Volokh Conspiracy: A Few Thoughts on Collins v. Virginia & Four Thoughts on Byrd v. United States
Volokh Conspiracy: A Few Thoughts on Collins v. Virginia by Orin Kerr Volokh Conspiracy: Four Thoughts on Byrd v. United States by Orin Kerr
Reason: The Fourth Amendment, the Exclusionary Rule, and Illegal Government Searches
Reason: The Fourth Amendment, the Exclusionary Rule, and Illegal Government Searches by Damon Root:
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Justices to consider scope of Fourth Amendment’s “automobile exception”
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: Justices to consider scope of Fourth Amendment’s “automobile exception” by Amy Howe:
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: For Fourth Amendment purposes, does it matter who is on the car-rental agreement?
SCOTUSBlog: Argument preview: For Fourth Amendment purposes, does it matter who is on the car-rental agreement? by Amy Howe:
There are six pending SCOTUS Fourth Amendment cases
Six pending SCOTUS Fourth Amendment cases
Today is [or maybe] the 414th anniversay of Semayne’s Case and judicial recognition of knock-and-announce and the castle doctrine
Today (as best as can be determined) is the 414th anniversary of Semayne’s Case recognizing both knock-and-announce and the castle doctrine at common law. Back then, the dates of decisions weren’t as important and they appeared in reporters well after … Continue reading
Lawfare: The Best Way to Rule for Carpenter (Or, How to Expand Fourth Amendment Protections Without Making A Mess)
Lawfare: The Best Way to Rule for Carpenter (Or, How to Expand Fourth Amendment Protections Without Making A Mess) by Orin Kerr:
Police News: How SCOTUS impacted law enforcement in 2017
Police News: How SCOTUS impacted law enforcement in 2017 by Terrence P. Dwyer
The Hill: SCOTUS justices are ready to tackle privacy rights in the digital age
The Hill: SCOTUS justices are ready to tackle privacy rights in the digital age by Alan Butler: This case will not be decided in a vacuum, and it appears that the justices appreciate both the magnitude of the moment and … Continue reading
WaPo: ‘The Volokh Conspiracy’ Blog: Thoughts on property and positive law after the Carpenter oral argument
WaPo: ‘The Volokh Conspiracy’ Blog: Thoughts on property and positive law after the Carpenter oral argument by Will Baude:
Law and Liberty: The Original Meaning and the Carpenter Case: “Their Papers”
Law and Liberty: The Original Meaning and the Carpenter Case: “Their Papers” by Mike Rappaport:
The Atlantic: A Liberal-Conservative Alliance on the Supreme Court Against Digital Surveillance
The Atlantic: A Liberal-Conservative Alliance on the Supreme Court Against Digital Surveillance Jeffrey Rosen: Justices found common ground in asserting the relevance of the Fourth Amendment in the electronic age, even as they cited sharply different rationales.
The Hill: It’s too easy for the government to invade privacy in name of security
The Hill: It’s too easy for the government to invade privacy in name of security by Jonathan Turley:
Carpenter argument now online and Kerr’s comments
Transcript here. Orin Kerr’s video comments here. Kerr’s twitter post with link added: Summary of Carpenter argument using the “four models” framework: Carpenter may win based on several Justices relying on the policy model and one Justice relying on the … Continue reading
NYTimes: Justices Seem Ready to Boost Protection of Digital Privacy
NYTimes: Justices Seem Ready to Boost Protection of Digital Privacy by Adam Liptak:
NYTimes: How a Radio Shack Robbery Could Spur a New Era in Digital Privacy
NYTimes: How a Radio Shack Robbery Could Spur a New Era in Digital Privacy by Adam Liptak It could also seal the fate of our lack of right to privacy in information unless Congress acts. Considering all the FISA posturing … Continue reading