What laws and cases cover the ways police are able to search?

surferchic: What laws and cases cover the ways police are able to search?
Please include any law or case that changed the laws in any way….all the way back to when law enforcement started in the USA.
I’m doing a term paper for my criminal justice classes.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Bruce
The Fourth Amendment covers search and seizure, that is where it all starts.

There are a couple of landmark cases that defined that authority, such as Terry v. Ohio (protective pat down of weapons) and Carroll v. United States (permits searching a vehicle without a warrant).

The most recent case is Gant v. Arizona, which limits the scope of a search incident to an arrest.

There are other laws that define what happens if a search is illegal, such as Mapp v. Ohio (established the “Exclusionary Rule”) and Weeks v. United States (makes the Mapp decision applicable to all states).

There is a lot more to it. Much more than I could list here, but those are some of the major decisions.

Answer by WOP2_99
Wunnerful. You’re going to be a cop or a judge, and already asking folks to do your work for you. Look it up yourself, its your class.

Answer by Mr Placid
There have literally been thousands of cases. All of the cases from the federal courts alone concerning search and seizure would literally take up 50+ linear feet on a library bookshelf.

You’ll need to narrow your topic if you want to write your term paper in less than a couple hundred pages.