Maryland v. Wilson: The Making of a Supreme Court Case

Abstract:     
By 1996, Professor Byron L. Warnken had taught Fourth Amendment search and seizure to law students for 17 years. That year, the Supreme Court appointed him to represent Jerry Lee Wilson in what has become known as the “passenger stop” case. It seemed to most experts that there was very little chance of the government losing on the de minimus intrusion of requiring a passenger to exit a validly stopped vehicle, even when there was no issue of officer safety. Janet Reno, the Attorney General of the United States, must have agreed, because she selected the Wilson case to make her only cameo appearance in the Supreme Court during her eight years as Attorney General. This 21-page 1998 article is titled “Maryland v. Wilson: Developing & Litigating a Supreme Court Case.” It was published in the University of Baltimore Law Forum. The article demonstrates the “making of a Supreme Court case.”

Number of Pages in PDF File: 21

Keywords: Fourth Amendment, Constitutional law, search & seizure, Supreme Court cases, passenger stop cases, Jerry Lee Wilson, de minimus intrusions, Janet Reno, U.S. Attorney General, litigation, police, law enforcement

JEL Classification: K14, K19, K39, K49

working papers series