Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 67.0

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

17 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

ing).  Suffice it to say, the Founders would be confused by 
this  Court’s  transformation  of  their  common-law  protec­
tion of property into a “warrant requirement” and a vague 
inquiry into “reasonable expectations of privacy.” 

III
  That  the  Katz  test  departs  so  far  from  the  text  of  the
Fourth Amendment is reason enough to reject it.  But the 
Katz test also has proved unworkable in practice.  Jurists 
and  commentators  tasked  with  deciphering  our  jurispru­
dence have described the Katz regime as “an unpredictable 
jumble,”  “a  mass  of  contradictions  and  obscurities,”  “all 
over  the  map,”  “riddled  with  inconsistency  and  incoher­
ence,”  “a  series  of  inconsistent  and  bizarre  results  that 
[the  Court]  has  left  entirely  undefended,”  “unstable,” 
“chameleon-like,”  “ ‘notoriously  unhelpful,’ ”  “a  conclusion
rather  than  a  starting  point  for  analysis,”  “distressingly 
unmanageable,”  “a  dismal  failure,”  “flawed  to  the  core,” 
“unadorned  fiat,”  and  “inspired  by  the  kind  of  logic  that
produced  Rube  Goldberg’s  bizarre  contraptions.”10    Even  

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10 Kugler  &  Strahilevitz,  Actual  Expectations  of  Privacy,  Fourth 
Amendment  Doctrine,  and  the  Mosaic  Theory,  2015  S.  Ct.  Rev.  205,
261; Bradley, Two Models of the Fourth Amendment, 83 Mich. L. Rev.
1468  (1985);  Kerr,  Four  Models  of  Fourth  Amendment  Protection,  60 
Stan. L. Rev. 503, 505 (2007); Solove, Fourth Amendment Pragmatism,
51  Boston  College  L.  Rev.  1511  (2010);  Wasserstom  &  Seidman,  The
Fourth  Amendment  as  Constitutional  Theory,  77  Geo.  L. J.  19,  29 
(1988);  Colb,  What  Is  a  Search?  Two  Conceptual  Flaws  in  Fourth
Amendment  Doctrine  and  Some  Hints  of  a  Remedy,  55  Stan.  L.  Rev.
119,  122  (2002);  Clancy,  The  Fourth  Amendment:  Its  History  and 
Interpretation §3.3.4, p. 65 (2008); Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U. S. 83, 97 
(1998) (Scalia, J., dissenting); State v. Campbell, 306 Ore. 157, 164, 759 
P. 2d 1040, 1044 (1988); Wilkins, Defining the “Reasonable Expectation
of  Privacy”:  an  Emerging  Tripartite  Analysis,  40  Vand.  L.  Rev.  1077,
1107  (1987);  Yeager,  Search,  Seizure  and  the  Positive  Law:  Expecta­
tions  of  Privacy  Outside  the  Fourth  Amendment,  84  J.  Crim.  L.  &  C.
249,  251  (1993);  Thomas,  Time  Travel,  Hovercrafts,  and  the  Framers: