NCJ Number
107901
Journal
Judges' Journal Volume: 26 Issue: 3 Dated: (Summer 1987) Pages: 48-56
Date Published
1987
Length
9 pages
Annotation
The 1967 shift in the U.S. Supreme Court's attitude regarding the balance between the individual's right of privacy and society's right to security has resulted in a focus on balancing competing interests rather than automatically applying the textual balance of the fourth amendment in making decisions about searches and seizures.
Abstract
The fourth amendment presents a balance that gives privacy a broad, flexible scope while permitting intrusions by society's agents under precisely enunciated circumstances. Twentieth-century search and seizure law has reflected a struggle between those who would preserve this balance and those who would reframe it. The 1967 decision in Camara v. Municipal Court signaled the beginning of the shift to the revisionist philosophy, by noting the need to balance the need to search against the invasion that the search entails. The 1968 decision in Terry v. Ohio moved a step further by holding the search or seizure could be reasonable without probable cause, if reasonable suspicion existed. The good faith exception to the exclusionary rule is another result of the growing dominance of revisionist theory. The revisionist view is also in a position to control the result of two remaining unresolved issues: whether the good faith exception applies to searches and seizures based on reasonable suspicion and whether reasonable suspicion is, by definition, individualized suspicion. Decisions reflecting the revisionist view would further reduce much of the fourth amendment's textual protection of the individual's reasonable expectations of privacy. 51 reference notes.