This week Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican senator from Kentucky, said he was "Worried" and "Disappointed" by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's views on the Fourth Amendment.
To some extent, Kavanaugh is simply following his understanding of the Supreme Court's search and seizure precedents.
In 2015 Kavanaugh called the National Security Agency's mass collection of Americans' telephone records "Entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment." According to the logic of a 1979 decision in which the Supreme Court approved warrantless police access to the phone numbers dialed by a robbery suspect, he said, the NSA's snooping did not amount to a search.
While two members of a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel deemed that requirement unreasonable because the government had presented no evidence of "a serious drug problem among staff," Kavanaugh said the policy was justified as a way of shielding the at-risk youth served by the centers from drugs.
Kavanaugh likewise pushed a new excuse for warrantless searches in a 2008 case brought by a man named Paul Askew, who was convicted of illegally possessing a gun that police discovered after stopping him because his clothing was similar to an armed robber's.
Kavanaugh, who wanted the full appeals court to rehear the case after a panel concluded that the surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment, was skeptical of the idea that tracking Jones constituted a search because of the quality and quantity of information it collected.
Kavanaugh was more open to the argument that ultimately persuaded a majority of the Supreme Court: that the physical intrusion required to plant the tracking device amounted to a search.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/07/18/brett-kavanaughs-fourth-amendment-blind
To some extent, Kavanaugh is simply following his understanding of the Supreme Court's search and seizure precedents.
In 2015 Kavanaugh called the National Security Agency's mass collection of Americans' telephone records "Entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment." According to the logic of a 1979 decision in which the Supreme Court approved warrantless police access to the phone numbers dialed by a robbery suspect, he said, the NSA's snooping did not amount to a search.
While two members of a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel deemed that requirement unreasonable because the government had presented no evidence of "a serious drug problem among staff," Kavanaugh said the policy was justified as a way of shielding the at-risk youth served by the centers from drugs.
Kavanaugh likewise pushed a new excuse for warrantless searches in a 2008 case brought by a man named Paul Askew, who was convicted of illegally possessing a gun that police discovered after stopping him because his clothing was similar to an armed robber's.
Kavanaugh, who wanted the full appeals court to rehear the case after a panel concluded that the surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment, was skeptical of the idea that tracking Jones constituted a search because of the quality and quantity of information it collected.
Kavanaugh was more open to the argument that ultimately persuaded a majority of the Supreme Court: that the physical intrusion required to plant the tracking device amounted to a search.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/07/18/brett-kavanaughs-fourth-amendment-blind
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