Modern interactions between humans and robots challenge our conceptions of self, privacy, and society, stretching the capacities of legal regimes to preserve autonomy, intimacy, and democratic governance. Where should we look for normative and legal guidance? One possibility in the US context is the Fourth Amendment. Unfortunately, rules governing “standing” and the state agency requirement limit the Amendment’s potential to protect core norms in these rapidly evolving contexts. This chapter argues that the text, history, and philosophical lineage of the Fourth Amendment favor a broader understanding of who can bring Fourth Amendment challenges and whose conduct should be subject to Fourth Amendment regulation. This reading dramatically enhances the Amendment’s role in efforts to understand, regulate, and protect human–robot interactions.

This chapter charts the most recent history of the private criminal justice system, from its lowest point of influence in the 1960s to modern times, when private police outnumber their public counterparts by almost a two-to-one margin. It also notes that private police are distinctive not just because of their sheer number but because of the goals that they seek to achieve – which are essentially the goals of the client who is paying them or the goals of the neighborhood or volunteer associaton that they represent. The chapter examines not only paid private police but also volunteer private police, such as the Guardian Angels, the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, neighborhood watch programs, and “white hat” hackers.The chapter concludes by pointing out the relatively low level of regulation that applies to private police and by examining the pros and cons of using private police to detect and apprehend criminals.

As social scientists seek to communicate research about what works in policing to police executives, they overlook important players in determining how informed by evidence policing will be: legal actors, including courts. This chapter argues that the law and research on policing influence each other in ways that shape evidence-based policing. First, the law alters what police practices are studied and therefore what practices are likely to become supported by social science evidence. It sometimes restricts or threatens to restrict police practices, making it less likely that researchers will devote attention to them. Other times it incentivizes research, by looking to it to determine the legality of police practices. And sometimes it supports social science work on policing by mandating data collection that facilitates research. Second, social science research on policing can change the content of the law. Not only legislatures but also courts look to research to answer questions about the effectiveness, fairness, and harmfulness of police practices that are relevant in legal decision-making. Given these interactions, researchers could improve both policing and the law by considering the needs of courts and legislatures as well as police executives as they contemplate and communicate future research.

Reynolds v. McNichols is a 1973 opinion from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Although the plaintiff was never convicted of prostitution or diagosed with an infection, she was held, examined, and involuntarily treated for sexually transmitted infections under the city of Denver’s “hold and treat” ordinance. The Tenth Circuit rejected her due process and equal protection challenges to the ordinance. In her feminist rewrite, Professor Wendy Parmet questions the health officials’ assumptions that female sex workers are “the primary source of venereal disease” and that the city can only protect the public’s health by forcibly treating them. She holds that the application of the ordinance to the plaintiff was discriminatory and that, under the circumstances, the defendants’ forced treatment of the plaintiff violated her right to privacy and their failure to obtain a warrant before forcing her to submit to a medical examination or remain in detention constituted an unreasonable search. In her commentary, Professor Aziza Ahmed situates the case in terms of historical responses to sex work under the banner of public health.

The Supreme Court provides cover for private actors who anonymously call 911 to report suspicious Black people to the police, and for the police who arrive with guns blazing.

Argued October 17, 1967.Decided December 18, 1967.

Mr. Justice CAPERS delivered the opinion of the Court.1

We are not precisely told how Charles Katz, the petitioner, came to the FBI’s attention as someone involved in illegal gambling. But clearly by early 1965, the FBI considered the petitioner a person worth keeping an eye on. What we are told is that starting around February 4, 1965, FBI agents began tailing the petitioner, and continued tailing him for about two weeks. Their surveillance of the petitioner, presumably without his knowledge, revealed that the petitioner had a daily habit of making telephone calls from a particular row of telephone booths on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Further investigation, presumably through the telephone company, revealed that the petitioner’s calls were placed to a number in Massachusetts, which number the FBI traced to a known gambler. Armed with this information, but lacking a warrant, the FBI secretly placed a recording device on top of the bank of phones the petitioner had been using.

Justice Marshall* delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case, we decide whether it is consistent with the Fourth Amendment for a police officer who observed a traffic violation to use that violation as the justification to perform a racially-selective traffic stop, or as the pretext to investigate a crime for which the officer does not have probable cause. We answer that question in the negative.

Argued December 12, 1967.Decided June 10, 1968.

Mr. Chief Justice WARREN1 delivered the opinion of the Court.

Is the police practice known as “stop and frisk” constitutional? This case presents frisky questions about the power of police to cop a feel. Our decision is a minstrelsy in three acts, with elements of burlesque.

Argued November 2, 1999.Decided January 12, 2000.

Justice L. SONG RICHARDSON delivered the opinion of the Court*

The issue in this case is whether a person’s sudden and unprovoked flight from a clearly identifiable police officer, who is patrolling a high crime area, is sufficiently suspicious, without more, to justify a temporary investigatory stop pursuant to Terry v. Ohio. We hold that it is not.

While the previous Chapter explores the origins of cryptography and explains the functional features of Blockchain, this Chapter provides a robust discussion of the various legal challenges and arguments surrounding this novel technology. While self-regulating markets have some desirable aspects, the anonymous or pseudonymous feature of cryptocurrency has its drawbacks which can lead to more fraud and corruption if left completely unchecked. Primarily, this Chapter focuses on administrative law implications and addresses the question of who could (and should) regulate cryptocurrency markets. The answer depends on how digital assets are classified. For example, if the digital asset is labelled a security, it will fall under the regulatory authority of the SEC but will be limited by the Supreme Court’s decision in SEC v. Howey. Further, this Chapter analyzes the constitutional implications of cryptocurrency–do people have a constitutional right to privacy when making financial transactions? This Chapter discusses the various constitutional rights that may be implicated and the arguments that may be used in future litigation.

Crminal law cases in the Court typically arose out of the enforcement of Prohibition and mostly dealt with issues about searches, though the Court did issue one important decision on the general part of criminal law delineating the scope of the entrapment or government misconduct defense. With Prohibition discredited and repealed early in the decade, the Court’s decisions ordinarily found that the searches at issue were unlawful. Prohibition led to the rise of organized crime, and some of the Court’s decisions addressed and usually allowed legal strategies aimed at organized crime, although one important decision struck down a New Jersey statute penalizing membership in criminal gangs. The decisions sometimes led the Court to consider how the law should respond to technological innovations -- airplanes for one, but wiretapping a more important one. One theme surfaced on occasion: the importance of porfessionalism in the administration of criminal justice.

The April 2018 arrest of the alleged Golden State Killer has ignited law enforcement interest in using consumer genetics platforms to solve crimes. Proponents of using genetic genealogy to solve crimes have argued that the genetic data on which these identifications rely has been voluntarily uploaded and shared. But as this chapter exposes, this assertion of voluntariness is mistaken on both intrinsic and practical grounds when it comes to genetic relatives. Identifying genetic data is shared among genetic relatives involuntarily and immutably as a matter of biology. Such data is also shared in unmanageable ways in light of the extensive web of relatives whose DNA can be used to identify or learn about an individual. This chapter argues that the disjunction between potentially voluntary sharing of genetic data by consumer genetics users and the involuntary sharing imposed on their genetic relatives is both ethically and legally problematic. It then offers a path forward, drawing on a tenancy by the entirety framework from property law and the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Carpenter case. This approach would permit law enforcement in some instances to use data stored on consumer genetics platforms–but only to seek direct identifications.

When police officers don’t order someone to stay and don’t frisk, civilians are legally allowed to walk away from officers who begin to question them. This right to walk away is pure legal fiction. Although the “free to leave” right is engraved in Supreme Court opinions, my Howard law students warned me that if we taught this during Know Your Rights trainings, we would endanger the teenagers. This legal fiction puts anyone approached by police officers in a lose–lose situation or “double bind.” If we don’t leave, we cannot complain later if it turns out the officer lacked a proper reason for the stop, and any evidence police find will be used against us in court. Yet, running from the police creates a possibility of being shot, and even walking away invites retaliation. We exercise our rights at our peril. Just as judges sometimes ask domestic violence victims “why didn’t you leave?” the Fourth Amendment demands that judges blame civilians for stopping and talking to police. Instead, the law should incorporate insights from the domestic violence advocates; namely, that the people stopped by police are in a better position to know whether it’s safe to leave than judges.

Chapter 6 lays out a continuum from lawful but awful frisks to sexual assault. I’ll never forget the male teenager who told me during a training that the last time he was frisked, “it felt like rape.” Sexual abuse of women and girls targeted for stops constitutes an enormous problem that’s rarely addressed. Likewise, police sexual misconduct is a huge hidden problem for men and boys. Courts mostly avoid mentioning the sexual aspect of patdowns, although the Supreme Court noted in Terry v. Ohio that a police training manual directed the officer to “feel with sensitive fingers every portion of the prisoner’s body. A thorough search must be made of the prisoner’s arms and armpits, waistline and back, the groin and area about the testicles.” This chapter illuminates the challenges that flow when courts categorize certain police actions as sexual abuse while omitting most sexual indignities from that category. If it feels like rape, it’s even more troubling when training manuals call for the maneuver and the Court approves it.

The Supreme Court mistakes submission for consent by constructing an alternative reality where police behave like the proverbial Officer Friendly. Court opinions direct judges to blame the victims of unconstitutional policing for submitting to police instead of exercising their rights. These fictions camouflage police aggression and racial profiling and allow it to thrive. Once we get rid of the consent doctrine, Terry v. Ohio must fall with it. The Supreme Court should review Terry’s balancing act, admit that the case was based on the false premise that people can choose not to cooperate, and this time include what we now know about the harms that flow from stop-and-frisk. Instead, the Supreme Court blew the chance in 2016 in Utah v. Strieff. Instead of overturning Terry, the Court expanded the government’s authority to control our liberty and our bodies. Because we can’t look to the courts to fix this, it’s more important than ever that readers recognize that stop-and-frisk leads the way in sapping constitutional rights. Legislators and progressive prosecutors, with the support of the public, can effectively abolish the “consent” excuse for violating the Constitution and end stop-and-frisk as we know it.

Some courts don’t recognize a right to silence during Terry stops. It’s legal now in some jurisdictions for police to arrest individuals for refusing to answer their questions. That’s court-approved retaliatory arrest. While the law governing pre-Miranda silence remains murky, the reality is clear: the teenagers we train can’t successfully invoke their right to silence during a stop-and-frisk without risking retaliation (whether legal or illegal). Court-sanctioned lies compound the difficulty in navigating police stops. When I train teenagers, my law students and I tell them that police are allowed to lie during Terry stops and at the police station. This fact confuses the teenagers we train. “If the officers will lie and say that I consent, why should I bother telling the officer that I don’t consent to searches?” Why learn one’s rights at all? As one teen put it, “The cop will just say I waived my rights no matter what I do.” Terry v. Ohio justified stop-and-frisk on the basis that police would use these stops to gather “voluntary” statements. But statements are not “voluntary” when made under threat. Once we acknowledge this, we see that Terry was built on a lie.