For The Cold Case Files

Does the Fourth Amendment allow law enforcement to gather an arrestee’s genetic sequence and compare it with a large FBI database of genetic material gathered from old, unsolved crimes? A reader asked me to do an analysis of Maryland v. King, a… Continue Reading

The Text Is All We Have

Today’s story about the Justice Department obtaining two months’ worth of telephone records from the Associated Press, apparently without a warrant and without any sort of prior notice to the people or entity thus searched, gives me a good platform… Continue Reading

Panic Stains Tsarnaev’s Apprehension

I cannot think of a time in American history, or indeed in world history, in which an entire city has been shut down to apprehend a single criminal. On Friday, the city of Boston and its neighboring cities of Cambridge and Watertown were… Continue Reading

Playing With Constitutional Fire

A few days ago I broke down a case from the Ninth Circuit permitting sectarian prayers at the opening of city council meetings for a city in California. In 2011, the Fourth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion with respect to… Continue Reading

Prayers Pass Panel

Let’s put to rest the trope that the Ninth Circuit is a court where out-of-control liberal activist judges run amok on all that is legal, just, and true. That notion is simply false. A case from the Ninth Circuit yesterday… Continue Reading