Full Description
Police are required to obey the law. While that seems obvious, courts have lost track of that requirement due to misinterpreting the two constitutional provisions governing police conduct: the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fourth Amendment forbids "unreasonable searches and seizures" and is the source of most constitutional constraints on policing. Although that provision technically applies only to the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, has been deemed to apply the Fourth Amendment to the States.
This book contends that the courts' misinterpretation of these provisions has led them to hold federal and state law enforcement mistakenly to the same constitutional standards. The Fourth Amendment was originally understood as a federalism, or "states' rights," provision that, in effect, required federal agents to adhere to state law when searching or seizing. Thus, applying the same constraint to the States is impossible. Instead, the Fourteenth Amendment was originally understood in part as requiring that state officials (1) adhere to state law, (2) not discriminate, and (3) not be granted excessive discretion by legislators. These principles should guide judicial review of modern policing. Instead, constitutional constraints on policing are too strict and too forgiving at the same time. In this book, Michael J.Z. Mannheimer calls for a reimagination of what modern policing could look like based on the original understandings of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Upside-Down Fourth Amendment
PART I: THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: ORIGINAL UNDERSTANDINGS
Chapter 1: Two Models of the Fourth Amendment
Chapter 2: The Local-Control Model of the Fourth Amendment
Chapter 3: The Anti-Federalists and the Fourth Amendment
Chapter 4: Original Understandings and Fourth Amendment Search Doctrine
Chapter 5: The Contingent Common Law of Searches and Arrests
PART II: THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: ORIGINAL UNDERSTANDINGS
Chapter 6: The Historical Backdrop of the Fourteenth Amendment
Chapter 7: Does the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporate the Fourth?
Chapter 8: Applying Constitutional Search-and-Seizure Constraints to the States Through the Fourteenth Amendment
PART III: ORIGINAL UNDERSTANDINGS AND MODERN POLICING
Chapter 9: The Principles of Nondiscrimination, Legality, and Nondelegation.
Chapter 10: Rethinking Constitutional Constraints on Searches and Seizures
Chapter 11: Original Understandings and Four Problems of Modern Policing
Bibliography
