With some of the news reports about the federal government’s collection of American personal data and the lid being blown off of the mass surveillance movement in the United States, there has been renewed concern among the masses about the fourth amendment and its protections on unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, a huge number of cases have shown that the fourth amendment is largely under attack from all different angles. Police and federal authorities regularly take liberties with the fundamental right to privacy, and perhaps more concerning, the Supreme Court seems uninterested in offering opinions that put constraints on police.
With this in mind, Professor Carolyn Long wrote a book called Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures. The title of her book is based upon a landmark Supreme Court decision that applied the exclusionary rule – the rule that disallows evidence collected in violation of the fourth amendment – to state and local authorities rather than just federal authorities. In tracing some of the most important developments in fourth amendment jurisprudence, the author provides a clear picture of the way that things have changed over the last decade or more. She notes that more limitations are being placed on police, but in some cases, even the new jurisprudence is not enough to protect citizens from intrusion.
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"Book Review: Mapp v. Ohio".
The author discusses, at length, the effect and lasting impact of the Mapp case. She does an excellent job of describing a somewhat cumbersome legal concept, discussing the ways in which the federal government had been prohibited from using illegally obtained evidence for many years before. With the ruling in Mapp, states were all bound by the exclusionary rule, as well, and this sparked something of a revolution. All of a sudden, police in those states had to operate much differently, and quite often, they responded by these changing expectations by coming up with their own ways to push the limits.
One of the primary strengths of this work is that it is able to draw a clear connection between Mapp and many of the changes in citizens’ rights jurisprudence that would follow. After Mapp, the Supreme Court in the time of Justice Warren found itself much more likely to pass laws limiting both police and prosecution from overrunning the rights of the accused or the suspected. This case sparked a real renaissance for those who believed that people should be protected from government overreach of this type. There seemed to be a real understanding that without the protections of the fourth amendment, fifth amendment, sixth amendment, and even the eighth amendment, people would have very little chance of surviving with the American justice system.
Long does describe a conflict at the heart of the debate over the exclusionary rule. There are different prevailing thoughts on the rule and how it should be viewed moving forward. Some view this rule as being a standard imposed by justices in order to protect the fourth amendment rights of citizens into perpetuity. The people who take this view tend to see it as an important interpretation of how the constitution was designed to apply to police, especially in those times when police commit detestable transgressions. Others view the exclusionary rule as being just another judicial decree designed to operate within the sphere of context. By that, they mean that the rule is applied to remedy problems taking place right now, but it is not necessarily an enduring standard. Instead, it might be rightly viewed as a standard subject to change based upon a host of different factors. This debate is at the heart of the problem with the exclusionary rule, and the author describes beautifully how people can become so split on the issue. Likewise, she once again uses this debate to trace into the future, noting how the differences of opinion on this issue will help to inform future debates on more than just the exclusionary rule.
One of the problems with many books on criminal procedure is that they can become dry and difficult to read. They will be necessarily technical to some degree, as they trace through constitutional law in a way that only first-year law students could truly enjoy. This is a necessary part of the process when writing a book like this, but Long understands that it does not have to be the entire process. This is why she added some flavor to the book by including information that she gained from interviewing various people associated with the Mapp case, including the case’s namesake. This helps to make the legal work more real, as it became clear to readers that rather than just being some technical point, this case and its ruling had a tangible effect on actual human beings.
Overall, this work succeeds on a number of levels. Whether read by a person with no knowledge of fourth amendment jurisprudence or read by someone with a keen interest in the subject area, it can be a useful tool for furthering one’s understanding. It is a book that rightly provides context to the debate, but it does not simply look backward. To the contrary, it looks forward, as well, allowing the author to use her considerable knowledge and expertise to make predictions on how the criminal justice system might look a few years down the road. This makes the book more than just a nutshell that might be used by a law student.
