Episode 262: Interpreting the Fourth Amendment

by Holly WhiteOctober 29, 2019

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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.