Congratulations to my colleague John Rubin, who was just named the Albert Coates Distinguished Professor of Public Law and Government. It’s a well-deserved permanent chaired professorship for John, who has worked tirelessly for many years to improve the quality of indigent defense in North Carolina. In developments outside the ivory tower: The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the two dog sniff cases this week. (One case asks whether officers conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they bring a drug dog to the front door of a home; the other asks what evidence of training and reliability is needed before a drug dog’s alert provides probable cause.) Transcripts of the oral arguments are available here, while Professor Orin Kerr’s short take on the two arguments is here. A while back, I was asked whether it would be constitutional for police, without a warrant, to set up motion-activated surveillance cameras on private property that was not within the curtilage of any dwelling. I thought it was a pretty interesting question but that on balance, current law concerning “open fields” suggested that such activity would be OK. A court was recently presented with the issue and reached the same conclusion. I noted two weeks ago that the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found a big increase in crime in 2011. However, the FBI recently released its Uniform Crime Reporting data from 2011, and those data show both violent and property crime continuing to drop. So whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist, you’re [...]
Faculty Coordinators
