Zurcher v. Stanford Daily

Zurcher v. Stanford Daily
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 17, 1978 Decided May 31, 1978
Full case name	Zurcher, Chief of Police of Palo Alto v. Stanford Daily
Docket no.	76-1484
Citations	436 U.S. 547 (more) 98 S. Ct. 1970; 56 L. Ed. 2d 525; 1978 U.S. LEXIS 98
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, 366 F. Supp. 18 (N.D. Cal. 1973); supplemented, 64 F.R.D. 680 (N.D. Cal. 1974); affirmed, 550 F.2d 464 (9th Cir. 1977); cert. granted, 434 U.S. 816 (1977).
Holding
The Fourth Amendment does not prevent a state from issuing a warrant against a third party not suspected of committing a crime. Preconditions for the issuance of a search warrants must be applied with "particular exactitude" if the materials being searched are protected by the First Amendment.
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
Majority	White, joined by Burger, Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist
Concurrence	Powell
Dissent	Stewart, joined by Marshall
Dissent	Stevens
Brennan took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Amend. IV U.S. Const. Amend. I

Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978), is a United States Supreme Court case from 1978 in which The Stanford Daily, a student newspaper at Stanford University, was searched by police who had suspected the paper to be in possession of photographs of a demonstration that took place at the university's hospital in April 1971. The Stanford Daily filed a suit claiming that under the protection of the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, the warrants were unconstitutional and that the searches should have fallen under the context of subpoenas. The Supreme Court ruled against The Stanford Daily;^[1] however, Congress later passed the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which provides additional protections against searches and seizures to the press and individuals who disseminate information to the public, unless the individual is suspected of a crime or a life-threatening situation is present.^[2]