Policing Posts

End-Running Warrants: Purchasing Data under the Fourth Amendment and the State Action Problem

Rather than obtain warrants, law enforcement and intelligence agencies now purchase mass datasets of precise geolocation information from third-party brokers. Scholarship suggests whether the government must obtain a warrant to purchase data relies on whether users have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But this Note suggests that this privacy analysis misses the crux of the controversy.

The Small Agency Problem in American Policing

While hardly immune from the various problems that plague modern policing, research has largely overlooked the thousands of small departments that serve rural areas and small towns. This paper begins to fill this gap by blending together empirical analysis with in-depth case studies that add much-needed texture to the patterns that the data reveal.

Lawless Surveillance

Policing agencies in the United States are engaging in mass collection of personal data, building a vast architecture of surveillance. This growing network of surveillance is almost entirely unregulated. It is, in short, lawless. In the face of growing concern over such surveillance, this Article argues there is a constitutional solution sitting in plain view.

Principles of the Law, Policing Is Approved

At the 2022 Annual Meeting, members of The American Law Institute voted to approve Tentative Draft No. 4 of Principles of the Law, Policing. The vote marks the completion of this project.