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St. Thomas Law Review

First Page

101

Document Type

Article

Abstract

It is hornbook law that the Bill of Rights provides a constitutional "floor" rather than a "ceiling." This means that the rights contained therein, which limit federal power directly and which are today understood as limiting state power by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, provide the minimum level of protection which no government may contravene. There is nothing to prevent the enactment of additional limitations on government power by granting or recognizing additional rights. Although such could be enacted as legislation, the focus of this symposium is state constitutions. Thus, for our purposes here, it is only necessary to say that a state constitution can recognize or grant rights which go beyond those embodied in the Federal Constitution. Such rights may be explicitly stated in the body of the text. For example, it may be that a particular right is included in a state constitution which does not appear in the Federal Constitution or it may be that a particular right appearing in both is described more expansively in the state constitution than in the federal. Or rights may be recognized through judicial interpretation of the text of the state constitution. Even if the text of a provision in the state constitution is identical to that in the federal, this would not preclude the state courts from interpreting the state provision in a way that is different and more expansive than the interpretation of the same language in the Federal Constitution. In recent years, there has been increasing attention given to the role of state constitutions in protecting individual rights. There is no doubt that this has come as a reaction to personnel changes on the United States Supreme Court and dissatisfaction, felt by many, with a number of its opinions. In a legal world where many rights advocates are increasingly unwilling to bring actions in federal courts, analysis of the meaning of state constitutional provisions becomes ever more important. The necessary predicates for any such analysis, however, are that courts can interpret constitutions and that the state supreme court is not subject to being overridden on matters of state constitutional law except through constitutional amendment. While neither of these propositions are startling, in Florida, in the area of search and seizure, neither of them are true. Since a constitutional amendment became effective in 1983, the. Florida courts have been required to interpret the search and seizure provision of the state constitution in conformity with United States Supreme Court interpretations of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This has also had the practical effect that search and seizure decisions of the Florida Supreme Court cannot be immunized from review by the United States Supreme Court. This article will first examine issues raised by the amendment. with a particular focus on how the amendment has been and should be interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court. It will then consider how Florida search and seizure law would be different had the amendment not been passed, with a particular focus on cases decided by the United States Supreme Court. Finally, it will highlight selected areas of Florida search and seizure law which appear likely to be modified in the future due to the application of the amendment.

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