Showing papers in "Supreme Court Review in 1961"

Federalism and the Fourth Amendment: A Requiem for Wolf

Abstract: The case of Mapp v. Ohio,' decided by the Supreme Court on the last day of its 1960 Term, is likely to achieve distinction even in this period of constitutional history, which is characterized by surprising and unsettling judicial action. Although the holding will have a direct, and sometimes painful, impact on state law-enforcement agencies, its ultimate ffect on the efficiency and quality of American criminal procedure may well be less than either the critics or the defenders of the decision are likely to concede. Nor is the interest of Mapp to be explained by any particular difficulty or subtlety in the immediate issues involved. Briefly, the Court overturned an Ohio conviction on the ground that the state court, in failing to exclude evidence secured by state officers through an unreasonable search and seizure, violated the defendant's rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In so doing, the Court specifically overruled Wolf v. Colorado,2 decided twelve years earlier, insofar as that decision had left the states free either to accept the \"exclusionary rule\" as a means of