Yesterday's decisions from the Supreme Court contain some discussions of interest to originalist scholars. First, in Carpenter v. United States (the cell phone data case). Chief Justice Roberts opens his majority opinion (for five Justices: himself, Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomakor and Kagan) with a nod to the Founding era:
The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The “basic purpose of this Amendment,” our cases have recognized,“is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials.” Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, 387 U. S. 523, 528 (1967). The Founding generation crafted the Fourth Amendment as a “response to the reviled ‘general warrants’ and ‘writs of assistance’ of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity.” Riley v. California, 573 U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 27). In fact, as John Adams recalled, the patriot James Otis’s 1761 speech condemning writs of assistance was “the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain” and helped spark the Revolution itself. Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 27–28) (quoting 10 Works of John Adams 248 (C. Adams ed. 1856)).
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We have kept this attention to Founding-era understandings in mind when applying the Fourth Amendment to innovations in surveillance tools. As technology has enhanced the Government’s capacity to encroach upon areas normally guarded from inquisitive eyes, this Court has sought to “assure[ ] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.” Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 34 (2001). For that reason, we rejected in Kyllo a “mechanical interpretation” of the Fourth Amendment and held that use of a thermal imager to detect heat radiating from the side of the defendant’s home was a search. Id., at 35. Because any other conclusion would leave homeowners “at the mercy of advancing technology,” we determined that the Government—absent a warrant—could not capitalize
on such new sense-enhancing technology to explore what was happening within the home. Ibid.
Likewise in Riley, the Court recognized the “immense storage capacity” of modern cell phones in holding that police officers must generally obtain a warrant before searching the contents of a phone. 573 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17). We explained that while the general rule allowing warrantless searches incident to arrest “strikes the appropriate balance in the context of physical objects, neither of its rationales has much force with respect to” the vast store of sensitive information on a cell phone. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 9).
The strongest originalism is in the dissents, however — especially by Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch (Justice Kennedy also dissented, principally on doctrinal grounds). From Thomas's dissent:
This case should not turn on “whether” a search occurred. It should turn, instead, on whose property was searched. The Fourth Amendment guarantees individuals the right to be secure from unreasonable searches of “their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” (Emphasis added.) In other words, “each person has the right to be secure against unreasonable searches . . . in his own person, house, papers, and effects.” Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U. S. 83, 92 (1998) (Scalia, J., concurring). By obtaining the cell-site records of MetroPCS and Sprint, the Government did not search Carpenter’s property. He did not create the records, he does not maintain them, he cannot control them, and he cannot destroy them. Neither the terms of his contracts nor any provision of law makes the records his. The records belong to MetroPCS and Sprint.
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The more fundamental problem with the Court’s opinion, however, is its use of the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, which was first articulated by Justice Harlan in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 360–361 (1967) (concurring opinion). The Katz test has no basis in the
text or history of the Fourth Amendment. And, it invites courts to make judgments about policy, not law. Until we confront the problems with this test, Katz will continue to distort Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. I respectfully dissent.
The dissent continues with a lengthy originalist attack on Katz and the "reasonable expectation of privacy" test, beginning:
The Katz test distorts the original meaning of “searc[h]”—the word in the Fourth Amendment that it purports to define, see ante, at 5; Smith, supra. Under the Katz test, the government conducts a search anytime it violates someone’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.”That is not a normal definition of the word “search.” At the founding, “search” did not mean a violation of someone’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The word was probably not a term of art, as it does not appear in legal dictionaries from the era. And its ordinary meaning was the same as it is today: “‘[t]o look over or through for the purpose of finding something; to explore; to examine by inspection; as, to search the house for a book; to search the wood for a thief.’” Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 32, n. 1 (2001) (quoting N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language 66 (1828) (reprint 6th ed. 1989)); accord, 2 S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed. 1773) (“Inquiry by looking into every suspected place”); N. Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (22d ed. 1770) (“a seeking after, a looking for, &c.”); 2 J. Ash, The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (2d ed. 1795) (“An enquiry, an examination, the act of seeking, an enquiry by looking into every suspected place; a quest; a pursuit”); T. Sheridan, A Complete Dictionary of the English Language (6th ed. 1796) (similar). The word “search” was not associated with “reasonable expectation of privacy” until Justice Harlan coined that phrase in 1967. The phrase “expectation(s) of privacy” does not appear in the pre-Katz federal or state case reporters, the papers of prominent Founders, early congressional documents and debates, collections of early American English texts, or early American newspapers.
Justice Alito's dissent focused on the historical foundations of the third-party doctrine:
The order in this case was the functional equivalent of a subpoena for documents, and there is no evidence that these writs were regarded as “searches” at the time of the founding. Subpoenas duces tecum and other forms of compulsory document production were well known to the
founding generation. Blackstone dated the first writ of subpoena to the reign of King Richard II in the late 14th century, and by the end of the 15th century, the use of such writs had “become the daily practice of the [Chancery] court.” 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 53 (G. Tucker ed. 1803) (Blackstone). Over the next 200 years, subpoenas would grow in prominence and power in tandem with the Court of Chancery, and by the end of Charles II’s reign in 1685, two important innovations had occurred.
First, the Court of Chancery developed a new species of subpoena. Until this point, subpoenas had been used largely to compel attendance and oral testimony from witnesses; these subpoenas correspond to today’s subpoenas ad testificandum. But the Court of Chancery also improvised a new version of the writ that tacked onto a regular subpoena an order compelling the witness to bring certain items with him. By issuing these so-called subpoenas duces tecum, the Court of Chancery could compel the production of papers, books, and other forms of physical evidence, whether from the parties to the case or from third parties. Such subpoenas were sufficiently commonplace by 1623 that a leading treatise on the practice of law could refer in passing to the fee for a “Sub pœna of Ducas tecum” (seven shillings and two pence) without needing to elaborate further. T. Powell, The Attourneys Academy 79 (1623). Subpoenas duces tecum would swell in use over the next century as the rules for their application became ever more developed and definite. See, e.g., 1 G. Jacob, The Compleat Chancery-Practiser 290 (1730) (“The Subpoena duces tecum is awarded when the defendant has confessed by his Answer that he hath such Writings in his Hands as are prayed by the Bill to be discovered or brought into Court”).
Second, although this new species of subpoena had its origins in the Court of Chancery, it soon made an appearance in the work of the common-law courts as well. One court later reported that “[t]he Courts of Common law . . . employed the same or similar means . . . from the time of Charles the Second at least.” Amey v. Long, 9 East. 473, 484, 103 Eng. Rep. 653, 658 (K. B. 1808).
After several more pages of history:
Talk of kings and common-law writs may seem out of place in a case about cell-site records and the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment in the modern age. But this history matters, not least because it tells us what was on the minds of those who ratified the Fourth Amendment and how they understood its scope. That history makes it abundantly clear that the Fourth Amendment, as originally understood, did not apply to the compulsory production of documents at all.
The Fourth Amendment does not regulate all methods by which the Government obtains documents. Rather, it prohibits only those “searches and seizures” of “persons, houses, papers, and effects” that are “unreasonable.” Consistent with that language, “at least until the latter half of the 20th century” “our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass.” United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. 400, 405 (2012). So by its terms, the Fourth Amendment does not apply to the compulsory production of documents, a practice that involves neither any physical intrusion into private space nor any taking of property by agents of the state.
Finally, Justice Gorsuch rejected both the third party doctrine and the reasonable expectation of privacy:
From the founding until the 1960s, the right to assert a Fourth Amendment claim didn’t depend on your ability to appeal to a judge’s personal
sensibilities about the “reasonableness” of your expectations or privacy. It was tied to the law. Jardines, 569 U. S., at 11; United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. 400, 405 (2012). The Fourth Amendment protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” True to those words and their original understanding, the traditional approach asked if a house, paper or effect was yours under law. No more was needed to trigger the Fourth Amendment. Though now often lost in Katz’s shadow, this traditional understanding persists. Katz only “supplements, rather than displaces the traditional property based understanding of the Fourth Amendment.” Byrd, 584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (internal quotation marks omitted); Jardines, supra, at 11 (same); Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U. S. 56, 64 (1992) (Katz did not “snuf[f] out the previously recognized protection for property under the Fourth Amendment”).
Beyond its provenance in the text and original understanding of the Amendment, this traditional approach comes with other advantages. Judges are supposed to decide cases based on “democratically legitimate sources of law”—like positive law or analogies to items protected by the enacted Constitution—rather than “their own biases or personal policy preferences.” Pettys, Judicial Discretion in Constitutional Cases, 26 J. L. & Pol. 123, 127 (2011). A Fourth Amendment model based on positive legal rights “carves out significant room for legislative participation in the Fourth Amendment context,” too, by asking judges to consult what the people’s representatives have to say about their rights. Baude & Stern, 129 Harv. L. Rev., at 1852. Nor is this approach hobbled by Smith and Miller, for those cases are just limitations on Katz, addressing only the question whether individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in materials they share with third parties. Under this more traditional approach, Fourth Amendment protections for your papers and effects do not automatically disappear just because you share them with third parties.
Plus a cite to my colleague Donald Dripps, in response to Justice Alito:
It may be that, as an original matter, a subpoena requiring the recipient to produce records wasn’t thought of as a “search or seizure” by the government implicating the Fourth Amendment, see ante, at 2–12 (opinion of ALITO, J.), but instead as an act of compelled self-incrimination
implicating the Fifth Amendment, see United States v. Hubbell, 530 U. S. 27, 49–55 (2000) (THOMAS, J., dissenting); Nagareda, Compulsion “To Be a Witness” and the Resurrection of Boyd, 74 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1575, 1619, and n. 172 (1999). But the common law of searches and seizures does not appear to have confronted a case where private documents equivalent to a mailed letter were entrusted to a bailee and then subpoenaed. As a result, “[t]he common-law rule regarding subpoenas for documents held by third parties entrusted with information from the target is . . . unknown and perhaps unknowable.” Dripps, Perspectives on The Fourth Amendment Forty Years Later: Toward the Realization of an Inclusive Regulatory Model, 100 Minn. L. Rev. 1885, 1922 (2016).
And in conclusion, looking to the next case:
Before the district court and court of appeals, Mr. Carpenter pursued only a Katz “reasonable expectations” argument. He did not invoke the law of property or any analogies to the common law, either there or in his petition for certiorari. Even in his merits brief before this Court, Mr. Carpenter’s discussion of his positive law rights in cell-site data was cursory. He offered no analysis, for example, of what rights state law might provide him in addition to those supplied by §222. In these circumstances, I cannot help but conclude—reluctantly—that Mr. Carpenter forfeited perhaps his most promising line of argument.
Unfortunately, too, this case marks the second time this Term that individuals have forfeited Fourth Amendment arguments based on positive law by failing to preserve them. See Byrd, 584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7). Litigants have had fair notice since at least United States v. Jones (2012) and Florida v. Jardines (2013) that arguments like these may vindicate Fourth Amendment interests even where Katz arguments do not. Yet the arguments have gone unmade, leaving courts to the usual Katz handwaving. These omissions do not serve the development of a sound or fully protective Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
That's a lot of originalism (each of Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch's dissents is about the same length as the majority opinion).
Posted at 6:53 AM