(University of Oregon School of Law, 2023-01-18) Kim, Janine Young
Perhaps the greatest puzzle of the Fourth Amendment—and indeed in all American law more broadly—is its definition of reasonableness. The Fourth Amendment guarantees our right to be secure “against unreasonable searches and seizures” without clearly elaborating on what such searches and seizures are. The laconic construction of this clause could simultaneously suggest a lack of interest among the Framers in adding this particular right to the Constitution,2 and their abiding belief that the right is so fundamental as to be already universally known.3 We moderns, on the other hand, find the Fourth Amendment to be both intensely compelling and confounding.
