Katz v. United States
Case Facts | Current State of the Katz Decision | Oxford Debate | Related Cases
Current State of the Katz Decision
Although Justice Harlan proposed his two-pronged test in order to synthesize the majority holding so that it could be used in deciding future cases, it too has been the subject of much interpretation and debate. For instance, in the case of Ciallo v. California (1986), the Supreme Court decided that society was not prepared to recognize a privacy right-to grow a backyard crop of marijuana-that would have prohibited police from using a low-flying surveillance airplane to observe someone's garden without first getting a warrant.
Likewise, in the case of Smith v. Maryland (1979), the Court said that society was not prepared to extend privacy rights to bank customers regarding their bank statements. The court said the police did not have to get a search warrant before obtaining a customer's bank statements directly from the bank. The court decided that although the statements are about customers, banks-not customers-technically own the statements. However, after this decision, Congress enacted legislation requiring that police produce a search warrant to obtain a bank customer's account records.
Finally, the Katz decision deals only with wiretapping insofar as it is used to provide evidence of a crime. The Supreme Court has, for the most part, not addressed the issue of whether or not the Katz standard is applicable to wiretaps that are undertaken for national security, as opposed to criminal prosecution, purposes.
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