The White Fourth Amendment

Reviews how the Fourth Amendment accomplishes its racial project in three parts. First, the jurisprudence rarely mentions race. Next, it grants extraordinary discretion to police and prosecutors. Finally, it constructs the criminal as colored, and the white as innocent. This article proceeds as follows. Part II describes Fourth Amendment jurisprudence's willful blindness to race. Part III explores the discretion the Supreme Court has handed to police and prosecutors. Part IV discusses the amendment's equation of blackness with criminality.