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The Fourth Amendment- Charlotte Simon

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The Fourth Amendment was created in response to the British policies allowing raiding of people’s houses and personal belongings without cause. The English government would issue “writs of assistance” essentially allowing British officers to barge into people’s homes and seize their belongings. The Framers, specifically James Madison, knew this was a direct violation of privacy and basic rights. With this in mind, Madison wrote the fourth amendment, as they did not want the Constitution to subject future Americans to unreasonable, lawless searches. The fourth amendment ensures the privacy and safety of American citizens. Personal items and property are protected by this amendment, as it prevents the police from searches and seizures of personal property without a justifiable reason.

 

The wording of the fourth amendment provides for it to be interpreted in a few different ways. Supreme Court Justices do not always agree on how the amendment should be enforced and even if the amendment should be followed in the first place. On one hand, some Justices stick to the wording of the amendments and argue that warrants are absolutely necessary, and if they are not obtained, the search would be illegitimate. However, some Justices, claiming that a warrant is not needed, as long as the search is reasonable and “upon probable cause.” Legal scholar Barry Friedman thinks that the amendment is essential to everyday protection. He argues that our data is constantly being analyzed, like internet cookies, and that the fourth amendment is protecting the people’s security and keeping the government out of our lives and property without a justifiable reason.

 

He also proposes guidelines for searches and seizures. First, he argues that no one from the executive branch can step into people’s lives without permission from another branch of government because no search is “reasonable” if the legislative or judicial cannot also agree on it. Second, warrants are favored as they are crucial for protecting public safety. Lastly, searches should be differentiated between society and suspects. Though it is a bit of a stretch, the fourth amendment is an amendment that gives power to the people, not an uncommon theme in the French Revolution. The third estate in France fought for equal taxes and power, and the fourth amendment protects the American people from an overstepping government. So while both are different, they do share the same theme of giving power to the people and keeping their respective governments in check. I am a believer in warrants and the fourth amendment as a whole. As the world and technology becomes more and more invasive, sometimes I really worry about the security of my data. The fourth amendment is in our constitution to protect us, and our property’s safety. As for warrants, they allow the policing force to perform searches and seizures in a significantly less invasive way. And, when they do perform searches/ seizures without a warrant, legally it has to be because they have a genuine reason.

Charlotte Sleeper – Sixth Amendment

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The Sixth Amendment elaborates on the second section of Article III, and declares that defendants also have the right to a speedy trial by jury, representation by a lawyer, and the right to face the witnesses for the prosecution. This amendment was particularly relevant to the Framers’, as one of the driving forces of the Revolution was the fact that, due to the Sugar Act allowing King George III to hold the colonists on trial in England, they were not given a fair trial.  

The Framers’ had to ensure that the people had faith in the American trial system in order for the constitution to be ratified. This is clear in the Federalist Paper Number 51, in which Alexander Hamilton remarks that both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists could agree upon the significance of safeguarding the right to trial by jury. The most contentious point of the amendment is how it can be applied to modern elements of the prosecution process, most notably the concept of forensic evidence. While, initially, the right to be presented with the witnesses for the prosecution was not a contentious matter, it has grown significantly more complicated in the world of advancing forensic analysis as well as video testimony.  

Stephanos Biblas, a U.S. circuit judge, believes that the sixth amendment does not require the exclusion of forensic evidence from a prosecution case if the coroner or other members of forensic investigations are unable to attend the trial if they have died or are otherwise unable to attend. He emphasizes the fact that forensic reports are a separate matter from police reports, stating that the Confrontation Clause of the sixth amendment was only meant to limit the replacement of live testimony with police reports had thus has no jurisdiction over limiting the use of forensic evidence. Another scholar, Jerry L. Fisher, argues that forensic evidence should be considered similarly to other forms of testimony and thus excluded if the analysts are unable to attend a live trial. He cites the fact that, while forensic evidence is often considered to be objective, the process of forensic analysis can be much more biased than the prosecution presents, leading to a false conviction if the forensic analysts cannot be cross-examined by the defense.  

While I sympathise with Biblas’s points surrounding the significance of forensic evidence, I ultimately concur with Fisher that the defendant has the right to have forensic evidence cross-examined. Although not explicitly stated, it is widely accepted that the Sixth Amendment illustrates the implied right of defendants to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Without the cross-examination of defense lawyers, it is too difficult to determine if the conclusions that forensic analysts come to are accurate. The debate surrounding Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) illustrates this point well, as it exemplifies that many forensic conclusions are based upon observations of symptoms, such as (in this case) patterns of head trauma. Since 2019, at least 21 people convicted based upon evidence of SBS have been exonerated, demonstrating the fallibility of forensic evidence, and thus the need for cross-examination of forensic analysts should the defendant desire it.

Dassori – 9th Amendment

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While the Constitution was being ratified, several Antifederalist state representatives only approved the document with the expectation that a bill of rights would be added afterwards to protect the people from an overly powerful government. However, because Federalist James Madison worried that a bill of rights would send the message that any other rights not listed were not protected by the government, he proposed the addition of a statement to protect unenumerated rights. His proposal resulted in the addition of the Ninth Amendment, which states that just because some rights are named in the Constitution does not mean those not mentioned are not protected by the government. 

The Ninth Amendment, which is notoriously vague, has been interpreted differently by many different Supreme Court judges and Constitutional scholars. Three prevalent interpretations of these unnamed rights are rights that are defined on a state-by-state basis, the natural rights of life, liberty, and property each individual has, or any imaginable right that the Constitution does not explicitly deny. Another interpretation ignores the Ninth Amendment because it does not concretely prove the existence of other rights or explain them in enough detail to be valid in a court case. 

Estelle Griswold used this amendment in Griswold v. Connecticut when she argued that married couples have a right to privacy and therefore a right to use contraception. Although privacy is never explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, Griswold used the Ninth Amendment and several other amendments to win her case, arguing that privacy is an assumed right of the American people and cannot be restricted by the law. Griswold v. Connecticut provides an example of how several judges interpreted this amendment differently, however, as only Justice Goldberg believed the right to privacy was represented in the Ninth Amendment while other judges found it in the Fourteenth Amendment or did not find privacy in the Constitution at all. 

I am most strongly persuaded that the “unenumerated rights” protected by the Ninth Amendment refer to natural or unalienable rights. These rights are featured in the writings of many of the Constitution’s framers and their Enlightenment contemporaries and are seen clearly in the Declaration of Independence. Because it was not specifically stated that the rights would be defined by the states or that they were completely limitless, I think the framers were referring to their own ideas of basic human rights, a concept that heavily influenced the rest of the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights. I would change this amendment to specify what kind of rights it was meant to protect because I think its vagueness restricts its power. By not clearly defining what it protects, the amendment allows many potential rights, such as the right to privacy, to be ignored by someone whose interpretation of the amendment did not include that right. If the Ninth Amendment had specifically stated that it, for example, protected natural rights, modern judges would be more likely to interpret it accurately instead of ignoring or abusing it.