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Article: The fourth amendment and the limits of theory: Local versus general theoretical knowledge
- Article from:
- St. John's Law Review
- Article date:
- July 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright St. John's Law Review Association Summer 1998. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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The commentators are remarkably unanimous: The Supreme Court cases construing the Fourth Amendment are a mess that lacks coherence and predictability, and fails to communicate the contours of the field.1 They attribute all this to the same problem: There is no general theoretical knowledge of the Fourth Amendment that animates the cases. The commentators all have, in a sense, the same solution: The Supreme Court should adopt the views of the commentators to straighten out the mess.2 There is one small problem: None of the commentators agree on what the proper Fourth Amendment theory is. Each focuses on different aspects of a set of interrelated issues, each apparently has a unique view of ...