Making Sense of Search and Seizure Law: A Fourth Amendment Handbook.

• Author: Logue, Thomas
• Position: Book review

Making Sense of Search and Seizure Law: A Fourth Amendment Handbook

By Phillip A. Hubbart

Judge Phillip Hubbart's classic treatise on search and seizure has just been updated. If you are looking for a source where you can research Fourth Amendment jurisprudence as it applies to a given case, look no further. This second edition (2015) now stands as the best single-volume treatise on the Fourth Amendment for the working lawyer or judge.

The strength of the book lies in the way Judge Hubbart takes more than 430 Supreme Court cases interpreting the Fourth Amendment and places them in context with each other. With an extraordinary command of the material, he organizes the mass of decisions into one coherent outline.

The result is a clear, easy-to-access, objective statement of the black letter law of the Fourth Amendment. The rationales for the rules are explained using language from the decisions. Examples are given using deft, concise summaries of the facts of the cases. Associated footnotes provide classic and highly usable quotations.

The first edition of this treatise has been quoted in many federal and state judicial opinions and in Yale, Georgetown, Hastings, and U.C. Davis law journals, among many others. It has been used in successful briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the recent case out of Florida concerning police use of drug-sniffing dogs at the front doors of homes.

Judge Hubbart himself is also highly quotable. He writes, for example, "Police officers on the street must often make split-second judgments --in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving--about the amount of force that is necessary in a given situation." Or, "it is a bedrock rule of Fourth Amendment law, subject to no exceptions, that a search or seizure cannot be made reasonable by its fruits."

Among other strengths, the book provides a concise overview of historic materials that are still shaping the debate on the Fourth Amendment. For example, Judge Hubbart examines Lord Camden's decisions in Entick v. Carrington, recently cited by Justice Scalia in deciding that police need a warrant to place a GPS device on a car; and in the Wilkes cases, relied upon by Professor Akhil Amar of Yale to argue against the exclusionary rule.

The book also covers James Otis' celebrated speech in a Boston courtroom in 1761 against the Crown's arbitrary use of general writs of assistance. John Adams, who was present in the courtroom, later wrote, "American...