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Time Travel, Hovercrafts, and the Framers: James Madison Sees the Future and Rewrites the Fourth Amendment

George C. Thomas III, Rutgers Law School (Newark)

Article comments

This article is published at 80 Notre Dame Law Review 4 (2005).

Abstract

The Framers could not have contemplated the interpretational problems that cloud the Fourth Amendment because police, in the modern sense, were unknown to the Framers. Also unknown to the Framers, of course, were wiretaps, drug interdiction searches, thermal imagining, helicopters, and blood tests. We can infer from the history surrounding the Fourth Amendment what the Framers hoped it would accomplish in their time. What if the Framers could have seen the future and known the kind of police techniques that are being used today? What kind of Fourth Amendment would they have written with that knowledge? This article seeks to answer this question.

Subject Area

Criminal Law and Procedure

Recommended Citation

George C. Thomas III, "Time Travel, Hovercrafts, and the Framers: James Madison Sees the Future and Rewrites the Fourth Amendment" (July 2005). Rutgers University (Newark) Legal Working Paper Series. Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers. Working Paper 25.
http://law.bepress.com/rutgersnewarklwps/fp/art25

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