Friday, February 22, 2013
Sawers on the History of Trespass
Brian Sawers (Maryland - VAP) has posted Keeping Up with the Joneses: Making Sure Your History Is Just as Wrong as Everyone Else's (Michigan Law Review First Impressions) on SSRN. Here's the abstract:
Both
the majority and concurring opinions in United States v. Jones are wrong
about the state of the law in 1791. Landowners in America had no right
to exclude others from unfenced land. Whether a Fourth Amendment search
requires a trespass or the violation of a reasonable expectation of
privacy, government can explore open land without a search warrant.
In
the United States, landowners did not have a right of action against
people who entered open land without permission. No eighteenth-century
case shows a remedy for mere entry. Vermont and Pennsylvania
constitutionally guaranteed a right to hunt on open land. In several
other states, statutes regulating hunting implied a public right to hunt
on (and, by implication, enter) unfenced land.
Steve Clowney
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/property/2013/02/sawers-on-the-history-of-trespass.html