Keywords
fourth amendment, privacy, warrant, searches, warrantless searches, California v. Carney, home, mobile home, vehicles, residence, vanlife
Abstract
From the time of the Revolutionary War, United States citizens have prioritized one thing over almost everything else: that “a man’s house is his castle.” This is immortalized in the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable and warrantless searches. The protections granted by the Fourth Amendment are not centered around the rights a person has in their property. Instead, “the principal object of the Fourth Amendment is the protection of privacy rather than property.” This protection is so important that the Supreme Court has been explicitly clear that warrantless searches should only be permitted in the most “exceptional” of circumstances. One way in which Fourth Amendment protections have been diminished is through the broad application of the “vehicle exception” to warrant requirements. At its inception, the vehicle exception applied only to traditional vehicles. However, as time went on, states did not uniformly apply the vehicle exception and were specifically divided regarding whether the exception should
Recommended Citation
Ilse Ghent,
“Are We There Yet?”: The Long Journey to Defining Motor Home Protections Under the Fourth Amendment,
77 Ark. L. Rev.
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr/vol77/iss4/5
