Making sense of search and seizure law : a Fourth Amendment handbook

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Where to find it

Law Library — 2nd Floor Collection (2nd floor)

Call Number
KF9630 .H83 2015
Status
Available

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Summary

To view or download the 2021 supplement to this book, click here.

Making Sense of Search and Seizure Law: A Fourth Amendment Handbook is the best one volume treatment of Fourth Amendment law in print. Competing works are sprawling, and often multi-volume, encyclopedic treatments of the subject. This book is easy to follow and makes sense of the subject in a way that readers can quickly grasp. The primary purpose of the book is to restate existing up-to-date Fourth Amendment law, as announced by the over 430 U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the subject, in an organized and lucid manner, true to its historical origins.

The book is divided into two parts: Part I, The Historical Background and Purpose of the Fourth Amendment; and Part II, The Substantive Law of the Fourth Amendment. Part I contains 6 chapters, including an in-depth discussion of the historical background that led to the adoption of the Fourth Amendment [1761-1791] -- not the cursory historical treatment usually found in competing works. These chapters show how this historical background has heavily influenced the development of Fourth Amendment case law, as well as how central the Fourth Amendment is to our country's development and traditions. Part II has an introductory chapter on constitutional construction, and is then divided into three subparts covering 10 chapters: Subpart A, The Standing Requirement; Subpart B, The Unreasonableness Requirement; and Subpart C, Enforcement of the Fourth Amendment.

Making Sense of Search and Seizure Law is designed for practicing lawyers and judges for use in their professional work, as well as law professors who teach Fourth Amendment law and wish to place a copy or multiple copies of the book on reserve as outside reading for their students. The general reader should also find it of interest --particularly the historical chapters.

Contents

Introduction to Fourth Amendment law -- The American colonial experience : general writs of assistance controversy 1761-76 -- The English experience : general warrants controversy 1762-70 -- American constitutional history : state constitutional provisions 1776-84 -- American constitutional history : United States Constitution and Bill of Rights 1787-91 -- Historical purpose of the Fourth Amendment -- Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment : approaches to constitutional construction -- Preliminary elements : personal standing and governmental action -- Search or seizure element : seizures of persons, houses, papers or effects -- Search or seizure element : searches of persons, houses, papers or effects -- General rules and principles of unreasonableness -- Seizures of persons and property -- Searches conducted with a search warrant -- Warrantless searches and criminal exceptions to the search warrant requirement rule -- Warrantless searches and civil or special needs exceptions to the search warrant requirement rule -- Special unreasonableness requirement problems -- Historical development, nature and purpose, and substantive law of the exclusionary rule.

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