The New Chief and the Fourth Amendment

Grits for Breakfast has a great summary of some recent commentary regarding Chief Justice nominee John Roberts and the Fourth Amendment. In the twelve search and seizure cases Roberts decided as a federal appellate judge, he found the government reasonable every single time. One incident involved a 12-year-old arrested for eating a single french fry in the subway station. Another case involved an officer doing a pat-down search who admitted that he believed the object he felt was neither a weapon nor contraband, but rather a drug scale. No problem for Judge Roberts who decided that it could have been some sort of square weapon, thus justifying the continuing search. It appears that a Chief Justice Roberts will continue the Supreme Court's dangerous trend of whittling the protections of the Fourth Amendment down to nothing.