The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
Search and seizure is a procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems by which police or other authorities and their agents, who, suspecting that a crime has been committed, commence a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence found in connection to the crime.
United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982), was a search and seizure case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. The high court was asked to decide if a legal warrantless search of an automobile allows closed containers found in the vehicle to be searched as well. The appeals court had previously ruled that opening and searching the closed portable containers without a warrant was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, even though the warrantless vehicle search was permissible due to existing precedent.
The open-fields doctrine, in the U.S. law of criminal procedure, is the legal doctrine that a "warrantless search of the area outside a property owner's curtilage" does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, "unless there is some other legal basis for the search," such a search "must exclude the home and any adjoining land that is within an enclosure or otherwise protected from public scrutiny."
In common law, the curtilage of a house or dwelling is the land immediately surrounding it, including any closely associated buildings and structures, but excluding any associated "open fields beyond". In feudal times every castle with its dependent buildings was protected by a surrounding wall, and all the land within the wall was termed the curtilage. The term excludes any closely associated buildings, structures, or divisions that contain the separate intimate activities of their own respective occupants, with those occupying residents being persons other than those residents of the house or dwelling of which the building is associated.
Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace.
Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court ruled that the use of thermal imaging devices to monitor heat radiation in or around a person's home, even if conducted from a public vantage point, is unconstitutional without a search warrant. In its majority opinion, the court held that thermal imaging constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, as the police were using devices to "explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion." The ruling has been noted for refining the reasonable expectation of privacy doctrine in light of new surveillance technologies, and when those are used in areas that are accessible to the public.
Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects against unreasonable search and seizure. This right provides those in Canada with their primary source of constitutionally enforced privacy rights against unreasonable intrusion from the state. Typically, this protects personal information that can be obtained through searching someone in pat-down, entering someone's property or surveillance.
In United States constitutional law, expectation of privacy is a legal test which is crucial in defining the scope of the applicability of the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is related to, but is not the same as, a right to privacy, a much broader concept which is found in many legal systems. Overall, expectations of privacy can be subjective or objective.
United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987), is a U.S. Supreme Court decision relating to the open fields doctrine limiting the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that aerial observation of a person's backyard by police, even if done without a search warrant, does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1 (1977), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that, absent exigency, the warrantless search of double-locked luggage just placed in the trunk of a parked vehicle is a violation of the Fourth Amendment and not justified under the automobile exception. The Court reasoned that while luggage is movable like an automobile, it does not have the lesser expectation of privacy associated with an automobile.
Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295 (1999), is a United States Supreme Court case which held that absent exigency, the warrantless search of a passenger's container capable of holding the object of a search for which there is probable cause is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution because it is justified under the automobile exception as an effect of the car.
The law of search and seizure in Pennsylvania is controlled by both the United States Constitution and the broader protections of the Pennsylvania Constitution. This article is concerned only with the protections provided by the Pennsylvania Constitution.
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
In United States Constitutional Law, a minimally intrusive/invasive warrantless search is a type of search that does not breach the boundaries of the property and is performed without any prerequisite search warrant. These searches are contested regularly in courts, and have been ruled for and against under different circumstances. The primary debate concerns the method in which the search is conducted, and also the area being searched. Issues concerning warrantless search and subsequent seizure are always of local concern, because they are a community law enforcement issue as well as a national law issue.
Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case which resulted in the decision that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant.
Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that the warrantless search and seizure of the digital contents of a cell phone during an arrest is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
Collins v. Virginia, No. 16-1027, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a case before the US Supreme Court involving search and seizure. At issue was whether the Fourth Amendment's motor vehicle exception permits a police officer uninvited and without a warrant to enter private property, approach a house, and search a vehicle parked a few feet from the house that is otherwise visible from off the property. In an 8–1 judgement, the Supreme Court ruled that the automobile exception does not apply to vehicles parked within the home or the curtilage of a private homeowner.
United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606 (1977), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held the search of letters or envelopes from foreign countries falls under the border exception to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
