View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.
"An exciting and original work of historya].[A] bracing
contribution to the somewhat dormant field of constitutional
historya].that will be of interest to any historian of the
Constitution. The book's main accomplishment is that it combines
contemporary and historical arguments without slighting either,
while providing important new evidence and insight into
each."
"Journal of American History"
aInsightful in its approach to the Fourth Amendment, not only in
terms of the law itself, but what is searched and seized, who
particularly is subject to search and seizure, and what abuses led
to broadening, thus capturing the full rich detail of the Fourth
Amendmenta].Taslitz shows us in thorough fashion that we would be
wise to learn from the past as we address the problems facing our
society.a
--"Law and Politics Book Review"
"Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment is a remarkable scholarly
accomplishment. It presents one of the most radical challenges to
standard constitutional thinking--not just about searches and
seizures but also about the interpretation of the Fourteenth
Amendment as a protection of individual rights--in recent
literature. Andrew Taslitz stakes out a radical and compelling
position on a pressing contemporary issue--the protection of
individual privacy against government invasion--and does so on
impeccably researched and intellectually conservative grounds. It
is a must read."
--H. Jefferson Powell, author of "A Community Built on Words: The
Constitution in History and Politics"
"Taslitz's analysis provides a unique vision of the Fourth
Amendment's purpose: to tame political violence from
governmentalofficials, while forcing officials to treat each
individual with respect and dignity. Taslitz's research on the
search and seizure practices of Southern states during
Reconstruction is illuminating and strengthens his thesis that
respect for the individual lies at the core of the Fourth
Amendment."
--Tracey Maclin, Professor of Law, Boston University School of
Law
"Fourth Amendment scholarship has hitherto emphasized the
amendment's background and gestation, i.e., the period before its
inception in 1789. Taslitz, however, has removed a critical gap in
that scholarship by illuminating the amendment's development after
1789, through the ante-bellum and Reconstruction periods, until
1868. Taslitz breaks new ground by exploring the Fourth Amendment's
connections with political violence and slavery. He introduces
readers to the interpretative diversity of and among scholars who
debate the amendment's original and current contents."
--William Cuddihy, author of "The Fourth Amendment: Origins and
Original Meaning, 602-1791"
The modern law of search and seizure permits warrantless
searches that ruin the citizenry's trust in law enforcement, harms
minorities, and embraces an individualistic notion of the rights
that it protects, ignoring essential roles that properly-conceived
protections of privacy, mobility, and property play in uniting
Americans. Many believe the Fourth Amendment is a poor bulwark
against state tyrannies, particularly during the War on Terror.
Historical amnesia has obscured the Fourth Amendment's positive
aspects, and Andrew E. Taslitz rescues its forgotten history in
Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment, which includes two novel
arguments. First, that theoriginal Fourth Amendment of 1791--born
in political struggle between the English and the colonists--served
important political functions, particularly in regulating
expressive political violence. Second, that the Amendment's meaning
changed when the Fourteenth Amendment was created to give teeth to
outlawing slavery, and its focus shifted from primary emphasis on
individualistic privacy notions as central to a white democratic
polis to enhanced protections for group privacy, individual
mobility, and property in a multi-racial republic.
With an understanding of the historical roots of the Fourth
Amendment, suggests Taslitz, we can upend negative assumptions of
modern search and seizure law, and create new institutional
approaches that give political voice to citizens and safeguard
against unnecessary humiliation and dehumanization at the hands of
the police.
General
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