Following Jardines, lower courts have looked anew at the concept of curtilage within multiunit dwellings.
(32) First, the court determined whether Hopkins's front door and porch constituted a constitutionally protected area, or curtilage.
In determining whether the contested area was protected curtilage, the court utilized the four-factor test developed in United States v.
Why focus on curtilage? First, Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Jones gave new life to the idea that trespass is still an influential Fourth Amendment theory.
As this Article will develop, curtilage provides a definitional tool rooted in the common law, and yet adaptable to the surveillance age.
This Article applies the theory of Fourth Amendment curtilage to persons acting in public.
Ciralo, (14) which--in the eyes of the Tenth Circuit--stood for the proposition that "aerial observation of a fenced-in backyard within the curtilage of a home without a warrant, does not violate the Fourth Amendment[*]" (15)
Ciralo argued that because his marijuana crop was growing inside the curtilage of his home, police should have obtained a search warrant before conducting the overflight.
The combined lesson possibly drawn from both Jackson and Ciralo is that if law enforcement personnel could observe a suspect's property (including a deliberately shielded curtilage) from a location where they have a right to be, then no Fourth Amendment privacy interest is affronted.
Modern Curtilage: Curtilage Itself Gets Fourth Amendment
keep things beat down, and at most, that would be the curtilage. (1)
curtilage." (8) Under Oliver's modern definition of curtilage,