{"id":68,"date":"2018-01-29T16:23:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T21:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/?page_id=68"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:09:44","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:09:44","slug":"fourth-amendment-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/in-print\/volume-55-issue-1-winter-2018\/fourth-amendment-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth Amendment Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Birchfield v. North Dakota<\/em> (2016), the Supreme Court broke new Fourth\u00a0Amendment ground by establishing that law enforcement\u2019s collection of information\u00a0can be cause for \u201canxiety,\u201d meriting constitutional protection, even if\u00a0subsequent uses of the information are tightly restricted. This change is significant.\u00a0While the Court has long recognized the reality that police cannot always be\u00a0trusted to follow constitutional rules, Birchfield<\/em> changes how that concern is\u00a0implemented in Fourth Amendment law, and importantly, in a manner that\u00a0acknowledges the new realities of data-driven policing.
\nBeyond offering a careful reading of Birchfield<\/em>, this Article has two goals. First,\u00a0we compare Birchfield<\/em> to two fixtures of Fourth Amendment law that likewise\u00a0stem from distrust of state power: the warrant requirement and the exclusionary\u00a0rule. Like traditional warrants, \u201cBirchfield<\/em> warrants\u201d have a prophylactic quality;\u00a0they enable ex ante judicial supervision. But Birchfield<\/em> warrants also go further\u00a0than traditional warrants; they aim to anticipate\u2014and preempt\u2014disregard for the\u00a0rules later on, not just to safeguard particularity in the immediate search or seizure.\u00a0In this sense, Birchfield<\/em> warrants do ex ante what the exclusionary rule does ex\u00a0post: deter abuse.
\nSecond, we connect Birchfield\u2019s<\/em> \u201canti-anxiety\u201d logic to two other areas of\u00a0constitutional criminal procedure. The first are settings\u2014speedy trial and double\u00a0jeopardy cases, most notably\u2014where the Court has recognized that potential uses\u00a0of state power can provoke anxiety and, accordingly, require constitutional\u00a0accommodation.We refer to this as the \u201cSword of Damocles\u201d problem. The second\u00a0area is Miranda<\/em>, which, like Birchfield<\/em>, deals with a problem of \u201cclosed-door\u201d\u00a0policing. In both Miranda<\/em> and Birchfield<\/em>, protective rules are necessary because\u00a0law enforcement decisions happen in the dark\u2014in Miranda<\/em>, due to the realities of\u00a0traditional custodial interrogation, and in Birchfield<\/em>, because collected information\u00a0simply disappears into a government vault.
\nBirchfield<\/em> is, in effect, the Court\u2019s first \u201cbig data collection\u201d case, having\u00a0doctrinal implications for the seizure and use of any information-rich evidence,\u00a0including support for Fourth Amendment use restrictions. In this sense, Birchfield\u00a0<\/em>is best understood as continuous with other recent jurisprudence\u2014most notably,\u00a0United States v. Jones <\/em>and Riley v. California<\/em>\u2014in which the Supreme Court has\u00a0revitalized the ideal of judicial supervision in the age of data-driven policing.<\/p>\n

Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Birchfield v. North Dakota (2016), the Supreme Court broke new Fourth\u00a0Amendment ground by establishing that law enforcement\u2019s collection of information\u00a0can be cause for \u201canxiety,\u201d meriting constitutional protection, even if\u00a0subsequent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":98,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-68","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2309,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68\/revisions\/2309"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}