Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 110

12 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

interests?  Or  assign  values  to  different  categories  of 
information?    All  we  know  is  that  historical  cell-site  loca-
tion  information  (for  seven  days,  anyway)  escapes  Smith 
and Miller’s shorn grasp, while a lifetime of bank or phone 
records  does  not.    As  to  any  other  kind  of  information,
lower courts will have to stay tuned.

In the end, our lower court colleagues are left with two
amorphous  balancing  tests,  a  series  of  weighty  and  in-
commensurable  principles  to  consider  in  them,  and  a  few 
illustrative examples that seem little more than the prod-
uct  of  judicial  intuition.    In  the  Court’s  defense,  though,
we  have  arrived  at  this  strange  place  not  because  the 
Court  has  misunderstood  Katz.  Far  from  it.  We  have 
arrived here because this is where Katz inevitably leads. 

* 

There  is  another  way.    From  the  founding  until  the 
1960s,  the  right  to  assert  a  Fourth  Amendment  claim
didn’t  depend  on  your  ability  to  appeal  to  a  judge’s  per- 
sonal sensibilities about the “reasonableness” of your expecta-
tions  or  privacy.    It  was  tied  to  the  law.   Jardines,  569 
U. S.,  at  11;  United  States  v.  Jones,  565  U. S.  400,  405 
(2012).  The Fourth Amendment protects “the right of the 
people  to  be  secure  in  their  persons,  houses,  papers  and 
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”  True 
to those words and their original understanding, the tradi-
tional approach asked if a house, paper or effect was yours
under  law.    No  more  was  needed  to  trigger  the  Fourth 
Amendment.  Though now often lost in Katz’s shadow, this 
traditional  understanding  persists.  Katz  only  “supple-
ments,  rather  than  displaces  the  traditional  property-
based  understanding  of  the  Fourth  Amendment.”    Byrd, 
584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (internal quotation marks 
omitted);  Jardines,  supra,  at  11  (same);  Soldal  v.  Cook 
County,  506  U. S.  56,  64  (1992)  (Katz  did  not  “snuf[f ]  out 
the  previously  recognized  protection  for  property  under