The Border Search Muddle, 132 Harvard Law Review (2019)

The Border Search Muddle by the Harvard Law Review
Phone and laptop searches at the border are often characterized as presenting a clash between traditional government prerogatives and contemporary digital privacy. This Note argues that that apparent tension is a false one. The law-office history that underpins the “border exception” to the warrant requirement is very plausibly wrong; what’s more, evidence from the Founding era provides little direct guidance on border search or seizure of papers. If anything, the state of the doctrine today is at odds with the Framers’ special concern for those documents that represent citizens’ “dearest property.”

KJ