Smith v. Maryland

Smith v. Maryland
Argued March 28, 1979
Decided June 20, 1979
Full case nameMichael Lee Smith v. Maryland
Citations442 U.S. 735 (more)
99 S. Ct. 2577; 61 L. Ed. 2d 220; 1979 U.S. LEXIS 134
Case history
PriorSmith v. State, 283 Md. 156, 389 A.2d 858 (1978); cert. granted, 439 U.S. 1001 (1978).
Holding
The installation and use of a pen register is not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant is required.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices
William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart
Byron White · Thurgood Marshall
Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr.
William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinions
MajorityBlackmun, joined by Burger, White, Rehnquist, Stevens
DissentStewart, joined by Brennan
DissentMarshall, joined by Brennan
Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), was a Supreme Court case holding that the installation and use of a pen register by the police to obtain information on a suspect's telephone calls was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and hence no search warrant was required. In the majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun rejected the idea that the installation and use of a pen register constitutes a violation of the suspect's reasonable expectation of privacy since the telephone numbers would be available to and recorded by the phone company anyway.[1]

The Smith ruling was the Supreme Court's first significant articulation of the third-party doctrine in which government investigators may be permitted to search a person's private information by obtaining it not from the person directly, but from a business or other party with which the person has traded such information voluntarily.[2]

  1. ^ Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979).
  2. ^ Solove, Daniel J. (2013). Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 102–110. ISBN 978-0300172331.