Abstract
Searches intrude; fundamentally, they infringe on a right to exclude. So that right should form the basis of Fourth Amendment protections. Current Fourth Amendment doctrine-the reasonable expectation of privacy teststruggles with conceptual clarity and predictability. The Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade casts further doubt on the reception of other privacy-based approaches with this Court. But the replacement approach that several Justices on the Court favor, what I call the "maximalist" property approach, risks troublingly narrow results. This Article provides a new alternative: Fourth Amendment protection should be anchored in a flexible concept derived from property law-what this Article terms a "situational right to exclude." When a searchee has a right to exclude some law-abiding person from the thing to be searched, in some circumstances, the government must obtain a warrant before gathering information from that item. Keeping the government out is warranted when an individual has a situational right to exclude; it is exactly then that the government must get a warrant.
Department
Law
Subject
criminal law, constitutional law, privacy law
Publication Date
2023
Journal Title
SMU Law Review
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25172/smulr.76.2.5
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Mailyn Fidler, Warranted Exclusion: A Case for a Fourth Amendment Built on the Right to Exclude, 76 SMU L. REV. 315 (2023).
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Fourth Amendment Commons, Privacy Law Commons, Property Law and Real Estate Commons