How has the Supreme Court applied the Fourth Amendment in the context of automobiles?

0:00[MUSIC] Back in 1925 in a case called Carroll v. The United States, the Supreme Court said there's no warrant requirement to search a car. Mere probable cause, believe there's evidence inside of a car allows a search without a search warrant. The Supreme Court has justified this rule on the ground that cars are easily movable. If you have a warrant requirement by the time you come back with the warrant, the car is going to be driven away. You can imagine this in the 1920s, in particular, before cell phones, before radios, in police cars, the officer couldn't just stop the car and come back few hours later, the car would have been long gone by then. That historical rule now 100-years-old has been retained, and that allows the government to stop cars, for example, and look for evidence based on probable cause. This actually ends up being a really big deal, because when the government doesn't have a warrant,

1:00that means they can stop cars and look for evidence, they will, for example, stop a car based on traffic violations, which the Supreme Court has allowed on the ground that safety violations relating to traffic laws, is important justification to allow a stop. Then they can ask questions which are really about questions to find evidence in the car to get to that probable cause. Officers might ask a question like, are there any drugs in the car? Well, why might they ask that? Well, one reason is if the answer, yeah, there are illegal drugs in the car, that's going to allow a search under the automobile exception. The fact that there are these lower constitutional standards for searches of cars really creates a strong pressure on the government, that push towards finding evidence in cars and focusing policing on evidence in cars.

1:48The police will go where the fourth Amendment limits are lesser, because it allows greater policing, which can be good if they find important evidence of important case. But also can be bad if they're using that power to harass people and pretextually enforce laws that maybe should not require that or justify that level of police attention. Police have a lot of power in police stops for traffic violations, and here's how the Supreme Court has broken this down.

2:16First question, are they allowed to pull over the car? Usually, they're allowed to pull over the car if there's any traffic violation. That could be speeding even just one mile an hour over the limit. You think about that, most cars driving on the road are speeding. If you try driving the speed limit, people will honk at you, because you're driving too slowly. The officers have a lot of discretion, and they're allowed to make a pretextual traffic stop. What does that mean in that setting? It means they're really not interested in enforcing the traffic laws. They're using the legal violation of the traffic violation in order to stop the car and maybe look for something else. This is what concerns about, for example, racial profiling at their highest. If the government is investigating some sort of

3:02case where they're engaging in racial profiling, that is allowed at least for purposes of the stop, because the government is actually justified, the Supreme Court has said, by the traffic violation. Let's say the stop occurs, and the officer say, you have to get out of the car. That's another place where the government has a lot of power.

3:22The Supreme Court has held that in a traffic stop, traffic stops can be dangerous. The officers are allowed to order the driver and passengers out of the car as a matter of course, without any particular suspicion to protect the officer safety, because the person in the car might have a gun. We live in a society, for example, where rates of gun ownership are very, very high, and that creates all sorts of officer safety concerns that the Supreme Court has said justify these extra powers, including ordering everybody out of the car. Here's where you do have control. Officers will often ask questions like, do you mind if I search the car? That is a request for consent. That is not an order that you have to say,

4:03yes, you can say, officer, I respect your authority, however, I don't consent. The officer will not be allowed to search the car based on consent. Officers will ask some questions to make it awkward for you to say no, for example, they might say, are there any guns in the car, and you say no, and they say, are there any drugs in the car?

4:23You say no. They say, well, you don't mind me checking the car just to make sure you're telling me the truth; do you? That's a question that might feel really awkward, because it's putting your honesty in play. But you can say, officer, I don't consent to search. I respect your authority. I just don't consent.

4:39Then the police cannot rely on the consent exception. If they have probable cause, they can search the car, but they need probable cause, and consent. If you withhold your consent, they can't rely on that exception. [MUSIC]