Courts often look to existing social norms to resolve difficult questions in Fourth Amendment law. In theory, these norms can provide an objective basis for courts’ constitutional decisions, grounding Fourth Amendment law in familiar societal attitudes and beliefs. In reality, however, social norms can shift rapidly, are constantly being contested, and frequently reflect outmoded and discriminatory concepts. This Article draws on contemporary sociological literatures on norms and technology to reveal how courts’ reliance on norms leads to several identifiable errors in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.Courts assessing social norms generally adopt what we call the closure principle, or the idea that social norms can be permanently settled. Meanwhile, courts confronting new technologies often adopt the nonintervention principle, or the idea that courts should refrain from addressing the Fourth Amendment implications of new surveillance practices until the relevant social norms become clear. Both approaches are flawed, and they have substantial negative effects for equality and privacy. By adopting norms perceived as closed, courts may embed antiquated norms in Fourth Amendment law—norms that often involve discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or class. By declining to intervene when norms are undeveloped, courts cede power over norm creation to companies that design new technologies based on data-extractive business models. Further, judicial norm reliance and nonintervention facilitate surveillance creep, the extension of familiar data-gathering infrastructures to new types of surveillance.This Article provides, for the first time, a full, critical account of the role of social norms in Fourth Amendment law. It details and challenges courts’ reliance on social norms in virtually every aspect of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. And it explores potential new directions for Fourth Amendment law, including novel doctrinal paradigms, different conceptions of stare decisis in the Fourth Amendment context, and alternative institutional regimes for regulating government surveillance.

中文翻译：

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第四修正案中的社会规范

法院经常寻求现有的社会规范来解决第四修正案中的难题。从理论上讲，这些规范可以为法院的宪法裁决提供客观基础，将第四修正案法律建立在熟悉的社会态度和信仰中。然而，在现实中，社会规范可以迅速转变，不断受到质疑，并经常反映过时和歧视性的概念。本文借鉴当代有关规范和技术的社会学文献，揭示法院对规范的依赖如何导致第四修正案法理学中的几个可识别错误。评估社会规范的法院通常采用我们所谓的封闭原则，或者认为社会规范可以被永久定居。同时，面对新技术的法院往往采用不干预原则，或者认为在相关的社会规范变得清晰之前，法院应避免解决新监视做法对第四修正案的影响。这两种方法都有缺陷，它们对平等和隐私有很大的负面影响。通过采用被视为封闭的规范，法院可能会将过时的规范嵌入第四修正案中——这些规范通常涉及基于种族、性别或阶级的歧视。通过拒绝在规范未制定时进行干预，法院将规范创建的权力让给了基于数据提取业务模型设计新技术的公司。此外，司法规范的依赖和不干预促进了监视蔓延，将熟悉的数据收集基础设施扩展到新型监视。本文首次提供了一个完整的、社会规范在第四修正案中的作用的批判性解释。它详细说明并挑战了法院在第四修正案判例的几乎每个方面对社会规范的依赖。它探索了第四修正案的潜在新方向，包括新的教义范式、第四修正案背景下的不同先例原则概念，以及监管政府监督的替代制度制度。