Subject: Re: Open fields doctrine unconstitutional under Pennsylvania constitution
On Jul 26, 2026 at 7:25:40 PM PDT, ""Adam H. Kerman"" <
ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
Another winning legal argument from Institute for Justice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SV_QfHCg-Y
Finally, someone sees sense.
The 4th Amendment makes no qualification about only some of your property
being protected from warrantless search and seizure.
The creation of the Open Fields Doctrine and the idea that only your "curtilage" is protected from warrantless intrusion is was another one of
those situations where the government just decided that abiding by the Constitution was just too much damn trouble so they invented an exception to the 4th Amendment out of thin air.
Same thing with the 4th Amendment-free zone at the border. Nothing in the Constitution or the writings of the framers indicates that they envisioned
some area around the border, let alone a 100-mile wide zone that envelops entire states like Florida and Hawaii, that's exempted from the protections of the 4th Amendment. The government just decided that the restrictions the 4th Amendment places on it were way too inconvenient for its liking, so they magicked a border exception into being with no legal basis for it whatsoever.
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