Artificial Intelligence and Policing: Hints in the Carpenter Decision

Abstract

In the 2018 Carpenter case, Chief Justice Roberts focuses on the quality of the information sought by the police as a means of deciding the case in Carpenter’s favor. Less obviously, however, the majority opinion also stresses the nature of the policing involved in Carpenter’s case: new technologies that do not just enhance human abilities. The majority makes no explicit clams about this focus. But the Carpenter decision reveals the Supreme Court’s first set of views on how it might evaluate police use of artificial intelligence. That contention, and the questions it raises, form the subject of this essay.