Orin S. Kerr | Lightnews

Orin Kerr

@orinkerr.bsky.social

30K followers 920 following 2.1K posts

Professor, Stanford Law School.
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.

Author, The Digital 4th Amendment:
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Fourth-Amendment-Privacy-Policing/dp/0190627077/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

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Orin Samuel Kerr is an American legal scholar known for his studies of American criminal procedure and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as computer crime law and internet surveillance. He has been a professor of law at Stanford Law School since 2025. Kerr is one of the contributors to the law-oriented blog titled The Volokh Conspiracy. .. more

Political science 35%

Law 28%

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Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 2d

Agreed, it's something to train for!

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 2d

Columbia law professor Herbert Wechsler, here interviewed about his career in criminal law and about the drafting of the Model Penal Code. (The interview was conducted in 1989, when Wechsler was 79; he passed away in 2000.)
youtube.com/watch?v=sgMS...

American Law Institute Oral History: Herbert Wechsler: Part 1

YouTube video by University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

youtube.com

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

I know where I will be in June 2028. And I'm glad I have two and half years to prepare.
sfopera.com/operas/ring-...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

Right, the article is from 1941.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

A First Amendment retaliation suit claiming the government searched you to retaliate for your speech requires pleading the absence of probable cause for the search, CA4 holds, agreeing with the CA5.
govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

Not sure I follow.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

The conclusion.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Courts have gutted the exclusionary rule, destroying its value, by creating so many exceptions to it, law review article "Circumventing the Fourth Amendment" argues . . . in 1941.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

You lay out the evidence, but you don't reconstruct to the jury how you found it or what led to the complaint.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Why would you present the use of AI in court?

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Kind of inherent in speculation, I would think! But if you need the pieces explained, the government's case is based largely on matching up otherwise unrelated sources that would involve massive amounts of data, and they say they combed over all that data again.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Seeing lots of questions about how investigators could somehow find the "needle in a haystack" now while they couldn't find it several years ago.

One possibility: AI.

AI is much more advanced today than a few years ago, and it's very good at going through haystacks of data to find needles.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

Maybe the problem is that I live in California. Hard to remember the last time that visibility was poor and conditions were hazardous. :)

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

Judge Wilkinson today on the 4th Amendment and digital technology. www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

Video of the shooting wasn't super clear, but it was clear enough to resolve the legal issue here—whether there was probable cause to believe that the individual shot posed a threat of serious physical harm. Here, there was. (per Scudder, J.)
media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opin...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

I suppose there's a philosophical question of what information about the world we should consider (a)reliable, (b) of uncertain reliability but somewhat relevant to our sense of the world or (c) completely 100% irrelevant. I tend to look at the data and slot it as (b), you look at it and slot it (c)

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

Got it. I can see wanting to have independent verification, of course. At the same time, "I can't put any value on this at all" seems like a quirky overreaction.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

It's a 2006 study of taxi versus regular drivers.