Court Opinion

ID: 9428039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:37.510371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.326595
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion, but I write separately to explain my somewhat different approach to the issues addressed in Part II-A thereof.
In my view, Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128 (1978), recognized two analytically distinct but “invariably intertwined” issues of substantive Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Id., at 139. The first is “whether [a] disputed search or seizure has infringed an interest of the defendant which the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect,” id., at 140; the second *112is whether “the challenged search or seizure violated [that] Fourth Amendment righ[t],” ibid. The first of these questions is answered by determining whether the defendant has a “legitimate expectation of privacy” that has been invaded by a governmental search or seizure. The second is answered by determining whether applicable cause and warrant requirements have been properly observed.
I agree with the Court that these two inquiries “merge into one,” ante, at 106, in the sense that both are to be addressed under the principles of Fourth Amendment analysis developed in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), and its progeny. But I do not read today’s decision, or Rakas, as holding that it is improper for lower courts to treat these inquiries as distinct components of a Fourth Amendment claim. Indeed, I am convinced that it would invite confusion to hold otherwise. It remains possible for a defendant to prove that his legitimate interest of privacy was invaded, and yet fail to prove that the police acted illegally in doing so. And it is equally possible for a defendant to prove that the police acted illegally, and yet fail to prove that his own privacy interest was affected.
Nor do I read this Court’s decisions to hold that property interests cannot be, in some circumstances at least, weighty factors in establishing the existence of Fourth Amendment rights. Not every concept of ownership or possession is “arcane.” Not every interest in property exists only in the desiccated atmosphere of ancient maxims and dusty books. Earlier this Term the Court recognized that “the right to exclude” is an essential element of modern property rights. Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S. 164, 179-180 (1979). In my view, that “right to exclude” often may be a principal determinant in the establishment of a legitimate Fourth Amendment interest. Accordingly, I would confine analysis to the facts of this case. On those facts, however, I agree that petitioner’s possessory interest in the vials of controlled *113substances is not sufficient to create a privacy interest in Vanessa Cox’s purse, and that such an interest was not otherwise conferred by any agreement between petitioner and Cox.