Document Type
Student Article
Abstract
Like an adolescent maturing into adulthood, Fourth Amendment search doctrine has gone through phases. Scholars may debate the underlying principles that have governed each phase, but they agree that two Supreme Court decisions dominate the doctrine as it stands today: Katz v. United States and United States v. Jones. The younger of these two rivals, Jones, has caused its share of consternation. Courts have struggled to consistently apply its trespass-based test, despite the test’s seemingly simple formulation. This Note considers the Jones test in the context of personal property, or chattel, making two arguments: first, careful adherence to common-law principles will yield consistent, reasonable results, and second, the Supreme Court should adopt a rule that under Jones only an actionable trespass, as opposed to a harmless interference with chattel, is sufficient to establish an unconstitutional search.
DOI
10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.2
First Page
285
Last Page
308
Recommended Citation
Will Baskin,
Trespass to Chattel and the Fourth Amendment,
11
Tex. A&M J. Prop. L.
285
(2025).
Available at:
https://doi.org/10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.2
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Fourth Amendment Commons, Property Law and Real Estate Commons
