History is an important tool when it comes to understanding American law.
History is what the justices of the United States Supreme Court use when they want to ascertain what the framers meant when they drafted the Constitution of 1787 and its first ten amendments in 1789.
And history is also the tool we use when we want to know how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution and its amendments have changed over time.
Sarah Seo, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa, Fourth Amendment expert, and the author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom, joins us to investigate how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has changed over time and how that change has impacted the way the Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable search and seizures.
About the Series
Law is all around us. The Doing History: Understanding the Fourth Amendment series uses the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment as case studies to examine where our rights come from and how they developed out of early American knowledge and experiences. It also uses the history of the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment to explore the history of law as a field of study and how this field of study differs from other historical subjects and how historians and lawyers use and view the history of the law differently.
The Doing History series explores early American history and how historians work. It is part of Ben Franklin’s World, which is a production of the Omohundro Institute.
Be sure you check out Doing History season 1, Doing History: How Historians Work; Doing History season 2, Doing History: To the Revolution!; And, Doing History season 3, Doing History: Biography.
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Each episode features a conversation with a historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.
Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.
Episode Summary
Sarah Seo, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa, Fourth Amendment expert, and the author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom, joins us to investigate how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has changed over time and how that change has impacted the way the Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable search and seizures.
As we investigate how and why the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Fourth Amendment have changed over time, Sarah reveals information about history and the law and how lawyers are taught to use history in their practice of the law; Originalism and Living Constitutionalism; And the history and evolution of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and what that history and evolution reveals to us about the importance of the Fourth Amendment in our present time.
What You’ll Discover
- How law professors teach law and history
- How historians and lawyers use history
- How historians and lawyers interpret the law
- Originalism
- Living Constitutionalism
- The Fourth Amendment in the 20th century
- Applying late 18th-century law to modern-day problems
- The historic rise in the number of Fourth Amendment cases in the courts
- The Fourth Amendment in the 19th century
- Boyd vs. United States (1886)
- Weeks vs. United States (1914)
- The United States Supreme Court and legal interpretation
- Kansas v Glover (2019) and the Fourth Amendment
- How the Supreme Court uses history in its decisions
- How history helps us understand law
Links to People, Places, and Publications
- Sarah Seo
- Sarah Seo, Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom
- Boyd vs. United States (1886)
- Weeks vs. United States (1914)
- Kansas v. Glover (2019)
- Arizona v. Gant (2008)
- Wolf v. Colorado (1949)
- Mapp v. Ohio (1961)
Series Resources
- Lauren Duval, “Domestic Tranquility: Privacy and the Household in Revolutionary America”
- Joseph Adelman, “Articles of Amendment: Copying “The” Bill of Rights”
- Gautham Rao, “Friends in All the Right Places: The Newest Legal History”
- Doing History 4 Legal Lexicon; or A Useful List of Terms You Might Not Know”
- “Doing History 4: Bibliography”
Sponsor Links
Complementary Episodes
- Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man
- Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773
- Episode 160: The Politics of Tea
- Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution
- Episode 259: The Bill of Rights & How Legal Historians Work
- Episode 260: Creating the First Ten Amendments
- Episode 261: Creating the Fourth Amendment
Questions, Comments, Suggestions
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