And now for something completely different: In an astonishing opinion, Judge Leon of the DC District Court has held that the NSA’s bulk collection of telephony metadata violates the Fourth Amendment and has enjoined the entire program (stayed pending appeal). In this post, I’ll just describe Judge Leon’s reasoning. In another post later today, I’ll […]
Author Archive | Orin Kerr
The Reasoning of the Utah Opinion Partially Striking Down and Rewriting the State’s Bigamy Law
In his post below, Eugene notes the new decision in Brown v. Buhman, involving Utah’s bigamy law. In the case, a group that considers polygamy a core part of its religious practice challenged a Utah law that states: “A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the […]
How Hackers Snooped on Government Officials at the 2011 G20 Summit Meeting
According to this story, dozens of computers of diplomats from countries including the Czech Republic, Portugal, Bulgaria, Hungary and Latvia had their computers infected with a virus designed to extract information when they were at the G20 summit in Paris in February 2011. The virus, believed to originate from China, came as an attachment to […]
Third Circuit Votes to Rehear Katzin En Banc on the Scope of the Davis Good Faith Exception [UPDATE: Second Circuit Weighs In, Too]
I’ve blogged before about United States v. Katzin, the Third Circuit decision imposing a warrant requirement for installing a GPS device on a car and limiting the scope of the Davis good faith exception. In my earlier post, I explained why the Third Circuit’s good faith analysis was not likely to be the last word […]
Jazz Guitarist Jim Hall, Dead at 83
One of my favorite jazz musicians has died: Jim Hall, one of the great jazz guitarists. To get a sense of his sound, click here to listen to Intermodulation, Hall’s magnificent 1966 duet album with pianist Bill Evans. I also recommend this recent compilation of some of his early albums. Wonderful music. Finally, for a […]
What Happened to the Cell Phone Search Petitions?
I mentioned a while ago that the two cert petitions on cell phone searches incident-to-arrest were calendared for December 6. They have been delayed, however, as the Court asked for the lower court record in Riley, the smart phone case. We don’t know what the Justices expect to get from the record, but it’s at […]
Voluntariness and the Law/Fact Distinction
This is a follow-up to this morning’s post on United States v. Robertson, the Fourth Circuit’s decision yesterday on the voluntariness of a consent search under the Fourth Amendment. In the comment threads, a lot of thoughtful comments raised the issue of whether voluntariness is really just a question of fact reviewed for clear error. […]
Our Own Jonathan Adler Featured in the Cleveland Plain Dealer
The story, “If Obamacare is overturned, a Case Western law professor gets the credit”, begins: If the law known as Obamacare gets struck down in the latest court challenge, the victors will thank a Hudson resident and Case Western Reserve University law professor who discovered what the law’s critics say is a major flaw. Jonathan […]
United States v. Robertson and the Voluntariness of Consent to a Fourth Amendment Search
Yesterday the Fourth Circuit handed down an interesting Fourth Amendment decision in United States v. Robertson, involving a consent search at a bus shelter. It’s a rare published decision from the Fourth Circuit, with a divided vote, and my tentative view is that the dissent is correct. As I understand the facts, several officers converged […]
My Instincts Were Wrong — At Least I Now Think They Were — On Maynard
Thanks to Will’s excellent post below, I now think I was wrong before in my earlier approach to Maynard. My sense now is that the correct approach is to say that the Supreme Court didn’t reach the Maynard question of whether GPS tracking is a search under Katz. As a result, there is still a […]
Relying on Maynard After Jones
Reading EFF’s amicus brief recently filed in United States v. Vargas reminds me of a question that has come up in Fourth Amendment circles after the Supreme Court’s 2012 GPS decision, United States v. Jones: Is the DC Circuit’s mosaic analysis in United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2012), aff’d sub nom. […]
Sixth Circuit Hands Down En Banc Decision in United States v. Blewett
Readers may recall that I blogged about the outlandish Sixth Circuit panel decision on the retroactivity of the Fair Sentencing Act here, and I pointed out that the circuit vacated the panel decision to go en banc here. The en banc court handed down its opinions today, with Judge Sutton writing the majority opinion disagreeing […]
URL Shortening in Legal Briefs, and Now Legal Opinions
Most readers will be familiar with URL shortening services — redirection services that give users a short web address that points to a longer one. I’ve come across URL shortening in legal briefs more and more, and I have used such links in briefs myself. The shortening avoids an unsightly excessively-long URL when you are […]
The Rule of Lenity Versus Chevron Deference
In his concurring opinion today in Carter v. Welles-Bowen Realty, Judge Sutton addresses a very interesting legal question: If an administrative agency is charged with administering a statute with criminal sanctions, and the agency adopts a broad reading of the statute that ordinarily would be entitled to Chevron deference absent the criminal sanctions, does the […]
The Lon Fuller Website
I was googling around yesterday and stumbled across a website that I think is a pretty cool idea: LonLFuller.org, a website created by the estate of the law professor and legal theorist Lon Fuller. Fuller died in 1978, but his estate set up the website to have a short biography of Fuller (with some personal […]