Participant Info
- Case
- Mapp v. Ohio
- Citation
- 367 US 643
- Type
- Concurring
- Year
- 1961
- Description
In Mapp v. Ohio, Black finds that his brethren on the Court are more amenable to his positions on the 14th Amendment. In a case involving a conviction for knowingly possessing lewd books, Justice Tom Clark writes for the Court that the State was required to get a search warrant before searching and seizing illicit books and must exclude such seized evidence from trail. In so doing, the Court overturned its 1948 decision in Wolf v. Colorado, and adopts Black’s view that the adoption of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War made the 4th Amendment a constitutional requirement that the States must obey.
Black’s concurring opinion notes his 1947 dissent in Adamson, which laid out his understanding of how the 14th Amendment made the Bill of Rights applicable to the States, but it is mostly an explanation why Black now agrees to the judicial rule that illegally seized evidence must be excluded from trial.
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