The Story of United States v. United States District Court (Keith): The Surveillance Power
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Description
May the President, acting in the interests of national security, authorize the electronic surveillance of persons within the United States without first obtaining a judicial warrant? The Supreme Court’s first and still most important answer to that question came in United States v. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, better known as the Keith case.1 In what the New York Times called “a stunning legal setback” for the government, the Court concluded that “Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillance may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch.” Thus, the Court held, a judicial warrant must issue before the government may engage in wiretapping or other electronic surveillance of domestic threats to national security. But the Court also limited its holding to cases involving “the domestic aspects of national security,” and “express[ed] no opinion as to [the surveillance of the] activities of foreign powers or their agents.” Both in what it said and what it did not say, Keith has exerted great influence upon the judicial, legislative, and executive approaches to these issues in the years since. Keith is also a great story. Arising in a period of great social and political unrest in this country, its cast of characters features “White Panther” radicals, famed civil liberties lawyers, Watergate accomplices, a federal judge as a named party, and a junior Justice whose opinion for the Court no one would have predicted. Before meeting those characters, however, we need some background both on the law and practice of national security surveillance in general and on the circumstances giving rise to the Keith case in particular.
Source Publication
Presidential Power Stories
Source Editors/Authors
Christopher H. Schroeder, Curtis A. Bradley
Publication Date
2009
Recommended Citation
Morrison, Trevor W., "The Story of United States v. United States District Court (Keith): The Surveillance Power" (2009). Faculty Chapters. 1991.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1991
