On May 16, 2011 an amicus brief was filed on behalf of CLDEF in the case of United States v. Antoine Jones in the United States Supreme Court. Our amicus brief urges the Supreme Court to grant the petition for writ of certiorari in this case, not for the reasons stated in the government’s petition, but to resolve a split among the circuits on the Fourth Amendment’s relevance and application to covert installations of global positioning systems (“GPS”) on an American citizen’s automobile by restoring the Fourth Amendment to its original text and purpose. Our amicus brief argues that the original objective, property-based text and purpose of the Fourth Amendment should be revived and applied, while the current ad hoc subjective, privacy-based view of the Fourth Amendment should be rejected.
