Six@Six – The Fourth Amendment, Originalism, and Modern Policing

Name: Six@Six – The Fourth Amendment, Originalism, and Modern Policing
Start: 2025-11-19T18:15:00-05:00
Location: Behringer-Crawford Museum

Schedule

Wed, 19 Nov, 2025 at 06:15 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Behringer-Crawford Museum | Covington, KY

Join the Scripps Howard Center as we continue our 15th anniversary season of the Six@Six lecture series! We are incredibly grateful for the Behringer-Crawford for being such enthusiastic partners and hosts for our lectures. Join us and Michael Mannheimer, J.D., as he examines the fourth amendment and its direct impact on modern day policing.
The Fourth Amendment, which prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures," places restrictions on policing. The Supreme Court has for many years taken an originalist approach to interpreting the Fourth Amendment, looking to the public understanding of its terms in 1791, when the Amendment was adopted. However, at that time, the Amendment constrained only the federal government. Thus, the Court's originalist approach is deficient, as it fails to account for the language of and history behind the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, which applied the Fourth Amendment's restrictions to state governments. That text and history points to a Fourth Amendment that emphasizes both democratic controls of search-and-seizure policy and tighter restrictions on the broad discretion currently exercised by law enforcement.