Cato: “The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Allow Roving Licenses to Detain People Without Probable Cause”

Cato: The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Allow Roving Licenses to Detain People Without Probable Cause by Ilya Shapiro and David Scott.

Searches and seizures have long been held to be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment unless supported by probable cause. There are only a few narrow exceptions to that probable cause requirement.

The Supreme Court found one such exception in the 1981 case of Michigan v. Summers, which gave police a limited authority to detain the occupants of premises that were lawfully being searched. The Court justified this limited detention by invoking the need for officers to have “unquestioned command” of the premises and prevent flight should incriminating evidence be found, thus “minimizing the risk of harm to the officers” and facilitating “the orderly completion of the search.”