Suspicionless Search and Seizure Quagmire: The Supreme Court Reviews the Pretext Doctrine and Creates Another Fine Fourth Amendment Mess, A

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|It has been said that one thing that unifies liberal and conservative commentators on the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court is "virtual unanimity, transcending normal ideological dispute, that the Court simply has made a mess of search and seizure law." The Court's decisions in the area of suspicionless searches and seizures amply support that proposition. To believe the pronouncements of the United States Supreme Court, "lawful suspicionless searches and seizures" should be almost an oxymoron. Time and again the Court has declared as a basic tenet of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that "a search or seizure is ordinarily unreasonable in the absence of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing" and on at least two occasions has stuck down a suspicionless search scheme because it did not "fit within the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless...