When should the police be able to search your phone, your computer, your email, or your dropbox? Orin Kerr thinks that over time, and in the face of changing technology and social practices, courts maintain a relatively consistent balance between privacy and the state’s interest in criminal investigation. The legal changes that maintain that consistency seem to be acceptable to originalists, pragmatists, and living constitutionalists alike. From cell phones to horses and buggies to automobiles and confidential informants. It’s the search episode. And then … yep, speed traps. Joe and Orin make a spiritual connection as non-warners.

This show’s links:


Orin Kerr’s faculty profile, writing, and blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy
Background on the Fourth Amendment and the exceptions to the warrant requirement
Orin Kerr, An Equilibrium-Adjustment Theory of the Fourth Amendment
Carroll v. United States and the automobile exception
Ex Parte Jackson (one of the earliest Fourth Amendment decisions)
Riley v. California (and see Orin’s post about the case shortly after it was decided
Example undercover informant cases: On Lee v. United States and Lewis v. United States
Keynote by Judge Richard Posner at the Empirical Legal Studies Conference
Jacqueline Ross, Tradeoffs in Undercover Investigations: A Comparative Perspective
John Mikhail on Universal Moral Grammar, on the excellent philosophy bites podcast
Orin Kerr, The Curious History of Fourth Amendment Searches
Orin Kerr, Foreword: Accounting for Technological Change
United States v. Robinson
Paul Giannelli, Independent Crime Laboratories: The Problem of Motivational and Cognitive Bias
United States v. Ganias
Our first speed trap shows: Speed Trap and Party All Over the World
Special Guest: Orin Kerr.