Orin S. Kerr | Lightnews

Orin Kerr

@orinkerr.bsky.social

30K followers 920 following 2K posts

Professor, Stanford Law School.
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.

Author, The Digital 4th Amendment:
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Fourth-Amendment-Privacy-Policing/dp/0190627077/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

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Orin Samuel Kerr is an American legal scholar known for his studies of American criminal procedure and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as computer crime law and internet surveillance. He has been a professor of law at Stanford Law School since 2025. Kerr is one of the contributors to the law-oriented blog titled The Volokh Conspiracy. .. more

Political science 35%

Law 28%

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Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 16h

Thanks, yep, I know a lot of profs do it your way. I tend to ask a lot of questions in which there is no answer, so I don't want an answer if there is none. If there's no answer, I want an explanation of why there' isn't one.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 2d

But here there is no correct answer; there is nothing to arrive at.

Reposted by Rebecca Tushnet, Nathan Richardson

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

Especially for the 1Ls out there, preparing for their 1st set of law school exams, I wrote this post back in 2007 about how to get a good grade on a law school issue spotter. The post, "Bad Answers, Good Answers, and Terrific Answers," is available here:
volokh.com/posts/116838...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

Favorite moment is at 2:28, when he switches from the vibraphone over to the marimba and the solo turns in a different direction.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

Bobby Hutcherson, Estaté, from "In the Vanguard," live at the Village Vanguard in December 1986, with Kenny Barron on piano, Buster Wiliams on bass, and Al Foster on drums.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Du...

Bobby Hutcherson - Estate

YouTube video by Sasa Top

www.youtube.com

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

Interesting. What source of law would you root that in, or is that more your take on what the law should sensibly be?

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

I think this question has been around for a long time; it's not new. But if there's a prophylactic power, how broadly should it extend? Can a judge enjoin a wide range of acts b/c the judge suspects that those acts are unconstitutional 50% of the time? 10% of the time? 1%? 0.00001%

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 3d

Order to stop building structure on person's property because there's no building permit is not a "seizure" of his property, 6th Circuit holds (per Thapar, J., unpublished)
www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

I didn't mind that part, but I'm more interested in the prophylactic injunction question. Can a judge enjoin more broadly than the 4th Amendment to try to prevent underlying 4th Amendment violations? And if so, how much? It's a recurring Q in these cases, I think.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Interesting passage from Judge Ellis's order, raising an intriguing question: What's the allowed prophylactic coverage of a Fourth Amendment injunction *beyond* actual Fourth Amendment violations?

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Love it, and thanks for the pictures.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

I always liked it when my law profs assigned their own casebooks, as it tended to signal the prof was enough of a subject matter expert to have created one. But YMMV

Reposted by Orin S. Kerr

Kannon Shanmugam @kannonshanmugam.bsky.social · 4d

It was just a joy to see @judgedillard.bsky.social receive the Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence at tonight’s NCSC dinner. Such a worthy recognition of an exemplary ambassador for the American bench.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Disguised as a pizza delivery guy, at least the first time.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

True, but kinda hard to fit all the details into a single tweet.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Court adds note to legislature: Do you really want this broad of a citizen's arrest power?

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

Man breaks into house of married couple to make a citizen's arrest for their making pornographic films, which he thinks violated federal obscenity law. Brawl follows, & he's charged w/kidnapping, burglary.

Nev SCT: There's no citizen's arrest defense here.
storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2025/11/...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

I would assume so, as professors often write casebooks in part because they want to teach from materials that present the law in a particular way. But I don't know.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

More on shooting pepper balls at protesters in Judge Ellis's order in Chicago today: Enough protesters were made to submit that the objective evidence suggests an intent to do that, not to make people disperse, so it's a 4A seizure.
s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26... #N

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

So close to....

a young boy in a red shirt and white collar is making a face .

ALT: a young boy in a red shirt and white collar is making a face .

media.tenor.com

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

From inside.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 4d

I have two casebooks in my collection that were self-published by members of the Harvard Law faculty in the late 1930s—Barton Leach on Wills, and Scott & Simpson on Remedies. My understanding is that self-published casebooks were common at the time, especially among HLS faculty.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

Got it. FWIW, I was just thinking of correct under existing precedents in a system of stare decisis, not correct in some first principles sense. :)

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

This is also a reminder that, although the Supreme Court likes to say 4th Amendment uses objective rules, there are actually a lot of subjective aspects of the doctrine.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

I'll leave it to the civil procedure folks to tell me if it's correct for a court to decide the officer's intent on summary judgment in this context, such that, with that fact decided, the QI standard can then apply.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 5d

It's not clearly established that shooting pepper balls at protester,—hitting him in the eye and making him fall to the ground—was a 4A "seizure," 8th Cir holds, where the officer seems to have had an intent to have the person disperse, not submit.
ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/25/11...

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 6d

I think the challenge is that, in the field of criminal procedure, an expansive view of rights is considered by many to be its own theory, and it is fairly widely accepted as true. If you're in that world, you don't need to justify the basic move.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 6d

If you're still using your AOL dial-up to get on to the information superhighway, maybe no.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 6d

Just a reminder to law profs who teach from my Computer Crime Law casebook that the new 6th edition will be out next month, in time for use in the Spring 2026 semester.

Orin Kerr @orinkerr.bsky.social · 6d

The key challenge in a lot of these papers, it seems to me, is justifying the reference point.

(end)

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