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Authors

John E. Hansen

Abstract

In Oliver v. United States, the United States Supreme Court confronted the issue of whether an individual has a sufficient expectation of privacy in an open field to raise the fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Long-standing doctrine held that fourth amendment protection does not extend to open fields. However, the validity of that doctrine was unclear after a 1967 Supreme Court decisions that held that the fourth amendment protects persons, not places, and focused the fourth amendment analysis on the party's reasonable expectation of privacy. Thereafter the issue in fourth amendment cases became whether the person reasonably expected privacy, rather than where the individual was located.

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