{"id":1596,"date":"2012-11-05T20:19:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T01:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1596"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:22:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:22:31","slug":"can-we-get-over-the-property-thing-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/11\/05\/can-we-get-over-the-property-thing-already\/","title":{"rendered":"Can We Get Over the Property Thing Already!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Mark Wilson<\/p>\n

<\/em>Last week\u2019s oral arguments in companion dog-sniffing cases will probably fall along predictable lines. And by \u201clines,\u201d I mean \u201cproperty lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Court will likely reverse\u00a0Florida v. Jardines<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on the ground that the officer who brought adorable canine cop Franky to the front door of Jardines\u2019 house was within the curtilage, the space adjacent to and associated with the home. Justice Scalia showed some trepidation at the idea that police could approach a house at any time, for any reason, and bring a canine-sniffing dog along. He likened it to the police peering into the home with binoculars,\u00a0Rear Window<\/em>-style<\/a>.\u00a0The second case,\u00a0Florida v. Harris<\/em><\/a>, will probably be affirmed. This case is basically the same as a previous drug-dog case,\u00a0Illinois v. Caballes<\/em><\/a>, with the exception that Aldo\u2019s certification paperwork had expired 16 months earlier.
\n
\nIn the past decade or so, the Court has twice been called on to address the problems that new technology poses to the Fourth Amendment. In\u00a0Kyllo v. United States<\/em><\/a>, Justice Scalia largely avoided the technology issue by focusing on the nature of the place searched rather than the nature of the technology used. A thermal imaging detector was a search because it enabled police to see activities inside the home, a sacrosanct space at common law. Similarly, in last year\u2019s\u00a0United States v. Jones<\/em><\/a>, Justice Scalia again focused on the place searched, holding that federal officials committed a common law trespass in attaching a GPS device to the underside of Jones\u2019 car, rendering their search unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s left behind, of course, is the problem of the technology itself. There will come a day when analogies to property interests (the same interests we supposedly left behind in\u00a0Katz v. United States<\/em><\/a>) won\u2019t work anymore. Justice Sotomayor, concurring in\u00a0Jones<\/em>, suggested as much. Justice Scalia\u2019s opinion in that case got the Court through to the end of the day, but the problems ahead are predictable and significant.<\/p>\n

During oral argument in these cases, Justice Kagan hinted that drug-sniffing dogs might constitute some type of technology. Justice Ginsburg pointed out that, even though dogs have had superior olfactory detection for their entire history on Earth, it was only in the 1970s that police began to use those noses to find drugs. And Justice Sotomayor, again the voice of reason in these situations, pointed out that drug dogs don\u2019t merely augment the human nose\u2014they supplant it. These are entirely valid concerns that, I fear, will be left on the curb like\u00a0Mr. Greenwood\u2019s garbage<\/a>.\u00a0No drug dogs on the curtilage. Why? Because it\u2019s curtilage. Not because a drug dog\u2019s nose operates over and above the capabilities of the human nose. And not because of drug dogs\u2019\u00a0significant reliability problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Court is fond of pulling \u201cjusticiability\u201d tricks like these. You could say (and Chief Justice Roberts would agree) that the Court shouldn\u2019t craft new constitutional doctrines lightly. But what do you do when a constitutional problem is staring right in your face? Ignore it and hope that the issue doesn\u2019t come back before you retire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Mark Wilson Last week\u2019s oral arguments in companion dog-sniffing cases will probably fall along predictable lines. And by \u201clines,\u201d I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-pK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}