New Podcast at PAW Online: Sarah Seo ’02 *16

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Sarah Seo ’02 *16

Photo: Nancy Chen Bajraktari

In popular culture, the car is seen as a symbol of freedom. But as legal historian SARAH SEO ’02 *16 writes, driving a car is also “the most policed aspect of everyday life.” Seo, the author of Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom (Harvard University Press), discussed the automobile’s impact on law enforcement on PAWcast, our monthly podcast series: 

Constitutional questions The Fourth Amendment protects people and their houses, and papers, and effects. Effect is another word for a movable thing, and a car is obviously a movable thing. And so, under the common law, an officer needed a warrant to stop and search a car. But there was a problem: Cars were easily mobile. People could get in a car and drive off at any time they wanted to. This posed really huge obstacles for law enforcement. 

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So what did the Supreme Court do? They completely changed the common law. They said that an officer does not need a warrant to stop and search a car if the officer has reasonable or probable cause that there’s contraband inside. This is a huge transformation. 

Legal leeway One unintended consequence is “driving while black.” The problem of racialized policing on the road that we see today is a product of this history. … When a police officer stops somebody for a minor traffic violation today, during that traffic stop, the Fourth Amendment starts allowing the officer to investigate further if the officer has a hunch or a suspicion that there might be more in the car. For minority drivers that often can result in a search of the entire car.  

LISTEN to the full interview at paw.princeton.edu/podcasts