The Fourth Amendment During the Lochner Era: Privacy, Property, and Liberty in Constitutional Theory

In this article, Professor Morgan Cloud proposes a surprising remedy for a Fourth Amendment jurisprudence he criticizes as lacking a unifying theory and failing to preserve the rights guaranteed by the Amendment. Professor Cloud's solution is a return to the theories espoused by the Supreme Court during the infamous Lochner era of the early twentieth century. He calls for a merging of the formalist and pragmatist theories of that period into an interpretive theory of the Fourth Amendment and suggests a rededication to the Amendment's Warrant Clause. Such a theory avoids the pitfalls of literalism and judicially determined social policy, while protecting the basic purposes of the Amendment to protect individual liberty, privacy, and property and to prevent unjustified government intrusions.