1. Discuss the US v. Drayton case. What were the circumstances? What was the issue? What was the decision?

2. In the Bustamonte case, what did the Court decide the judges have to do to decide whether a suspect’s will had been ‘overborne’? Explain.

3. How do Solan and Tiersma explain the tendency of people to consent? (p. 38) What is a speech act?

4. What is the difference between a request and a command? What are some examples of requests? Demands?

5.

Why do we tend to issue requests, commands and orders indirectly? How does this expectation relate to consent? How is the difference between requests and commands critical to the voluntariness of consent to a search? In answering this question, consider the Supreme Court’s decision they recognized that the question “Does the trunk open?” might be an indirect request. But they failed to recognize that it might also be a command.

6.

How can we use linguistic analysis to make the case that the ‘request’ by the officers in the Bustamonte case or in any similar situation would be coercive and thus essentially interpreted as a command? Provide examples of language to illustrate.

7.

What is Paul Grice’s Cooperative Principle and what role does it play in interpreting language in ‘consent’ to search? How does power play a role in ‘consent’ in these situations? How do the Courts tend to take pragmatic information into account? (p 48) How does the interpretation of ‘requests’ by police officers as ‘commands’ play a role in encouraging racial profiling? (p 49) What are the takeaways from this discussion of consensual searches? Discuss.

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1 Bus searches are usually used by police departments to seek out drugs and weapons but they are being criticized as unconstitutional violations of the Fourth Amendments prohibition against unreasonab... View the full answer