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CA6: Plaintiff has no standing to contest future potential searches of his e-mails by the government in the hands of the ISP; dissent: Founding Fathers would be "speechless"

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

CA6: Plaintiff has no standing to contest future potential searches of his e-mails by the government in the hands of the ISP. Warshak v. United States, 06-4092 (6th Cir. July 11, 2008) (en banc): There are several reasons why this claim is not “fit” for judicial review. To start, we have no idea whether the government will conduct an ex parte search of Warshak’s e-mail account in the future and plenty of reason to doubt that it will, making this a claim that depends on “contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.” Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. 296, 300 (1998) (internal quotation marks omitted). Answering difficult legal questions before they arise and before the courts know how they will arise is not the way we typically handle constitutional litigation...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on July 11, 2008 (boomark / email).