"Searching Old Digital Haystacks: Some Thoughts on the Richman v. United States Litigation," a new post from me. Lots of law nerdery just in time for Christmas. reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Andrew Hill, "Ocho Rios (1st version)," recorded 1/16/70, with Hill on piano, Charles Tolliver on trumpet, Bennie Maupin on tenor & flute, Pat Patrick on alto & flute, @RonCarterBass, and Paul Motian on drums. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqCI...

"Searching Old Digital Haystacks: Some Thoughts on the Richman v. United States Litigation," a new post from me. Lots of law nerdery just in time for Christmas. reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Warrant needed to enter defendant's room at transitional homeless center to arrest him, NY trial court rules. It's not a traditional home, but Payton still applies, so physical fruits of search suppressed. www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3ds...

Very good state-on-top cert petition recently filed: Are searches of a person's bags incident to arrest governed by the always-search-the-person rule of Robinson, or the only-search-in-the-area-around-the-person rule of Chimel? supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

For Christmas-themed jazz albums, I think that Ella Fitzgerald's "Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas" is pretty much the tops. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zTN...

Quick explainer for why this is a big deal, a thread.

Eric Reed, The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy), from "Manhattan Melodies" (1999), with Reginald Veal on bass and Greg Hutchinson on drums. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxb1...

A dog alerting to the small of cannabis is still presumptively probable cause of marijuana being present under Florida v. Harris, even though hemp smells the same and is now legal, CA6 holds per Judge Bloomekatz. www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf...

This is a big deal in the conservative legal world: John Malcom and the Ed Meese center are leaving the Heritage Foundation, 15 staff departing in all. (Hard to translate this for a BlueSky audience, but it's a pretty significant move in the conservative legal world.) www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

Josh Blackman resigns his position as Senior Editor of the recently-published Heritage Guide to the Constitution, posting the letter he wrote to Heritage over at Volokh. reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Conviction for evading lawful detention under Texas state law overturned by the Tex. Ct. Crim. App., 6-3, as no reasonable juror could find there was reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop here and therefore the detention evaded was not lawful. search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia....

First draft of the U.S. Constitution printed in secret for the delegates in August 1787, a copy marked up by delegate Pierce Butler. gilderlehrman.org/history-reso...

State university reprimands computer science professor for including a statement in his syllabus poking fun at land acknowledgements. This violated the professor's First Amendment rights, divided 9th Circuit panel rules, per Judge Bress. cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/op...

How law enforcement solved the Brown/MIT shooting cases: An eyewitness came forward who had strange interactions with the shooter just before the shooting at Brown, and who wrote about it on Reddit. He had info on the shooter's rental car. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Checked in on the analytics for "The Legal Academy" podcast I did in 2020 for the 1st time in a few years, to see if anyone still listens to it. Pleased to see it still gets some listens five years later. Not a lot, but not nothing.

NYT had a recent story on the continuing decline in enrollment of Black students at top law schools post-SFFA. The article didn't include overall numbers, tho, focusing instead on a few specific schools. ABA 509 forms make that easy to tabulate; here are the # of Black students per year at the T14.

Writing a long blog post about the Richman/Comey case and it is definitely reaching the "oh look its mid-December procrastinating while not grading exams" blog post length.

Looking for a holiday present for someone interested in computers and privacy? Let me suggest my new book, "The Digital Fourth Amendment." www.amazon.com/Digital-Four...

Officers in a high crime area spot a driver known to be on supervised release for a drug offense. They watch him meet up with another man known to officers from another drug case. The suspects talk at the car for 2 min. 4th Circuit: There's no reasonable suspicion here.

Reporting requirements of the 2020 Corporate Transparency Act do not facially violate the 4th Amendment, 11th Circuit rules, per Brasher, J.—and the act also doesn't exceed the Commerce Clause. media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...

Does the government need a warrant to obtain your Google search terms? Here's a detailed coverage of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's new ruling on that, a deep dive for the law nerds over at Volokh. reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules that there are no 4th Amendment rights in your Google search terms. When you search on Google, you tell them your search terms; the government can get those queries without a warrant. The third-party doctrine applies. www.pacourts.us/assets/opini...

Officers break into home at 6am to execute arrest warrant in murder case at suspect's home. But he's not there: The suspect had moved. CA3 divides over whether 4A violated under Payton: Bibas, per majority, no violation b/c there was probable cause. www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/243...

As passengers leave Trailways bus when trip is over, officer spots suitcase that looks suspiciously new & removes it from the luggage hold, placing it a few feet from bus, to see who picks it up. CA8: This was not a seizure, as it's just routine handling. ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/25/12...

Wait, the FBI was able to solve the 1/6 pipe bomb case because an agent finally figured out how to read the data they had sitting around for years? Curious what "deciphered" means here. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

One big issue in this 4th Circuit case argued Friday, US v. Lowers, is whether terms of service can eliminate 4th Amendment rights. courthousenews.com/north-caroli... I explain why TOS don't eliminate 4A rights in this article: scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcont...

And here we go. More commentary to come. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Interesting how the arrest doctrine here, in a 1865 Massachusetts case, amounted to a sort of exclusionary rule. You had a right to resist arrest if the warrant was an unlawful, so whether the conviction for rioting could be upheld depended on the particularity of the warrant.

Noteworthy early argument for the exclusionary rule, from 1896—a concurrence authored by a Connecticut Supreme Court Justice, interpreting the state Fourth Amendment equivalent. State v. Griswold, 67 Conn. 290 (1896). static.case.law/conn/67/case...

Bulgaria's government fell today, so I thought I would repost this article as potentially relevant again. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Forcing an already-charged criminal defendant to submit to a cheek swab for DNA requires a warrant, Minnesota Supreme Court holds. Maryland v. King does not apply. mn.gov/law-library-...

I opened a 2009 book review with this thought experiment about the law in 2035, which seemed entirely plausible at the time.

I learned recently that the Second Circuit held argument this summer in the US v. Jatiek Smith case, on whether the border search exception applies to digital devices. The district court, per Rakoff, said no. No opinion yet, but the argument is here: www.courtlistener.com/audio/99586/...

Off the top of my head, there would seem to be some pretty interesting Fourth Amendment reasoning implicit in this result. I look forward to the reasoning being made explicit. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... #N

3d Cir. holds that it did not violate the CFAA for employee to continue accessing her employer's email account after she resigned because employer had not affirmatively rescinded a prior grant of permission. www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/233...

Columbia law professor Herbert Wechsler, here interviewed about his career in criminal law and about the drafting of the Model Penal Code. (The interview was conducted in 1989, when Wechsler was 79; he passed away in 2000.) youtube.com/watch?v=sgMS...

I know where I will be in June 2028. And I'm glad I have two and half years to prepare. sfopera.com/operas/ring-...

A First Amendment retaliation suit claiming the government searched you to retaliate for your speech requires pleading the absence of probable cause for the search, CA4 holds, agreeing with the CA5. govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Courts have gutted the exclusionary rule, destroying its value, by creating so many exceptions to it, law review article "Circumventing the Fourth Amendment" argues . . . in 1941.

Seeing lots of questions about how investigators could somehow find the "needle in a haystack" now while they couldn't find it several years ago. One possibility: AI. AI is much more advanced today than a few years ago, and it's very good at going through haystacks of data to find needles.

Judge Wilkinson today on the 4th Amendment and digital technology. www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Video of the shooting wasn't super clear, but it was clear enough to resolve the legal issue here—whether there was probable cause to believe that the individual shot posed a threat of serious physical harm. Here, there was. (per Scudder, J.) media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opin...

Super impressive. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Interesting. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/u...

I'm a fan of profs looking back on their past articles and pointing out their weaknesses. (I've suggested before that senior profs should write articles, "Where I Went Wrong.") Here, Penn's Dave Hoffman does that with one of his well known articles. Kudos. profhoffman.substack.com/p/not-my-bes...

Notable Privacy, AI, and Security Books 2025 teachprivacy.com/notable-priv...

Of possible interest, HeinOnline has some new rankings of most-cited legal scholars. Here's the most cited legal scholars in order based on journal cites in the last five years (see last column for the numbers). heinonline.org/HOL/scholarl...

The University of Texas Law School's Supreme Court clinic has filed a cert petition in the Wells geofence warrant case. The state's BIO was due 11/19, but it appears nothing was filed. Petition here: supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

Finding a gun on a driver is relevant to whether there is reasonable suspicion to frisk the passenger for a gun, CA5 rules—and here, there was reasonable suspicion. www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...