Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

I have a new article coming out this summer in the North Carolina Law Review  entitled Judicial Deference To State Legislatures in Constitutional Analysis . It started as a paper about Bustamonte- type consent searches and North Carolina's unique statute defining consent in these cases - but it turned into an article about the relationship between the judiciary and legislatures in Fourth and Fifth Amendment cases.  Here is the abstract:  North Carolina is one of the only states to have a statutory definition of voluntary consent for police searches; it essentially codified the Supreme Court’s “ Bustamonte ” rule. In theory, this statute could eventually face a constitutional challenge if the Supreme Court adopted a requirement of informed consent – police warnings of the right to refuse a search – as many have urged. Considering this possibility as a hypothetical, it seems strange that conventional Fourth Amendment analysis has largely ignored whether challenged state ...