I’ve been working on an updated draft of my forthcoming article on the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment, and I could use help from readers on a relatively simple labeling question. In the article, I’m trying to contrast two understandings of the Fourth Amendment. The first understanding is the traditional view that courts must analyze whether government conduct is a Fourth Amendment search by focusing just on that one act at that one moment — that is, viewing each government act as a discrete step, and analyzing that discrete step as a search or a non-search. The second understanding is the new idea that courts should analyze whether government conduct is a Fourth Amendment search by aggregating over some range of different acts over different times, and considering whether the collective set of acts considered in the aggregate amounts to a search. When the first decision on the new approach came down, I decided to call the new approach “the mosaic theory,” as it is based on the notion that the aggregate of government conduct paints a mosaic of information about a suspect. I like that label, and plan to stick with it. My question is, what should I call the traditional approach? My current draft calls it “the discrete steps approach,” as it uses each discrete law enforcement act as the basic unit of analysis. But that label seems awkward, and I wonder if any readers have better ideas. I’d like a label that is relatively short, descriptive, and intuitive. I considered calling it “the atomistic approach,” but that label has been used in Fourth Amendment scholarship for a different idea, and using it here would be too confusing. I also thought of just calling it “the traditional approach,” but I’d like something more descriptive. Any ideas?