U.S. Supreme Court,
Constitutional Law
Sep. 21, 2011
A pocket full of clouds: digital devices and the Fourth Amendment
The digital revolution continues to redefine the scope of the Fourth Amendment.





2nd Appellate District, Division 5
Brian M. Hoffstadt
Presiding Justice
California Court of Appeal
UCLA School of Law, 1995
In recent years, the unstoppable evolutionary force of portable digital devices - from pagers to cell phones to smart phones and iPads - has slammed headlong into the immovable Fourth Amendment search incident to arrest (SITA) doctrine, which authorizes police making a lawful arrest to conduct a warrantless search of any areas (including closed containers) "immediately associated" with the arrestee and within the arrestee's "area of immediate control." The courts' ongoing struggle with t...
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