Template talk:US4thAmendment

As the primary initial creator of this template, here are a few of my thoughts for how I organized it:

(1) There are some cases (e.g. Gouled v. United States) that describe situations of BOTH search and seizure. I have tried to lump the combined search/seizure cases into "What is a search?" (completely arbitrarily) and left the pure seizure cases to "What is a seizure?" I know it's arbitrary but I think it's better than having a third "What is a search/seizure?" box, or combining everything into one such box.

(2) Clearly it's a bit awkward determining how to organize reasonable suspicion, stops/frisks, what constitutes a seizure, what distinguishes a stop from an arrest, etc. Open to suggestions for how to best organize these topics. Perhaps reasonable suspicion deserves its own box on par with Probable Cause and Seizures.

(3) Several cases are listed more than once in this template. I'd say this is the best option. Some cases have been of major importance to more than one of these sub-categories (e.g. Terry v. Ohio, which all at once established the "stop and frisk" warrant exception, while also defining a "stop" as a "seizure," and a "frisk" as a "search." Also US v. Place, which established that (a) reasonable suspicion justifies temporary seizure of luggage; (b) a dog sniff of that luggage while legally temporarily seized is not a "search"; but that (c) a 90-minute seizure of the luggage supported only by reasonable suspicion was an unreasonable seizure, and required probable cause.

(4) Several cases listed here do not (yet) have articles on Wikipedia, so the links appear in red. Please don't remove them from this template for that reason. A lot of important cases are not yet included on Wikipedia. My hope is that this template will serve to illuminate these cases and at some point other people will take on the task of creating pages for them. Antigravityece (talk) 19:31, 10 July 2015 (UTC)