On Monday, the Supreme Court issued an important ruling on the subject of surveillance in light of today’s technologies. Its opinion in United States v. Jones makes the rules for surveillance much less clear, which perhaps is not surprising given the rapid technological change and the need for further legislative and judicial action to address these complex new issues. Law enforcement long has used surveillance to track the comings and goings of suspects, probationers, and parolees as well as suspected spies, terrorists, and the like. Surveillance was oftentimes necessary and …
Those who remember the Warren Court recall imaginative renderings of the constitution to expand criminal’s rights coupled with outright judicial hostility to police. The result was a national crime wave only recently curbed by new police techniques and more favorable rulings from the Supreme Court. Now that Barack Obama has identified Earl Warren as a model judge, we could face a judicial flashback to the 1970s. Unfortunately, we have a preview of what that might look like from a recent Sixth Circuit case involving a drug arrest in Michigan. The …
