Minnesota V. Carter And The Right to Property

The Right to Property is well documented and is according to Chapter 5 of the Second Treatise on Government by John Locke basically that a person is entitled to the all that he/she earns from the labor of his/her body and the work of his/her hands and can do with it as he/she pleases. Property also include territory which like an animal whom expects its territory to be inviolate, humankind does also. This natural right was well known and even written into the English Common Law at the time the Declaration of Independence was unanimously passed by all 13 Colonies/States. The Declaration of Independence takes these rights so seriously that it declares the following about them.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

These natural laws were so important that the Constitution includes the Ninth Amendment which mentions them as rights retained by The People and states that they cannot be denied by the inclusion of other rights in the Constitution. In the United States we respect the right of property by many laws. Among these laws are Burglary, Theft, Vandalism, Trespassing, Anti Peeping Tom, etc.


The first point I am addressing is that one principal of the Rule of Law is that all individuals no matter what their role in society, whether a police officer or a private citizen are treated equally under the law. In the case we are addressing a police officer received a tip from confidential informant and he investigated that tip by looking though a whole in blinds. The police officer at this point has violated at least one and probably two right to property laws. They are the trespassing law which is a misdemeanor under current Minnesota rule 6105.0210 and the peeping tom rule(voyeurism) in which according to the National Crime and Punishment Learning Center the first offense is Up to $700 fine and/or up to 90 days in jail. According to the practice of law in the united states the police may break laws when in hot pursuit of a accused lawbreaker that are equal or less than the crime they are accused of committing, such as pursuing a speeder if it is deemed necessary to apprehend the later. The questions are did the officer have significant reason to be suspicious, was this police officers action necessary to establish probable cause. If both of those are yes and in my opinion they are then the officers actions were appropriate considering the extent to which he violated the right to privacy are significantly less than the crime he was investigating.


The second point unlike the first is a point the Court addresses and that is the reasonable expectation of privacy. The ideal that if you shouldn’t logically have an expectation that you will be secure from a search or seizer then you are not protected from that search or seizer bears consideration. For example if a child were to drop a bag full of guns in front of a police officer is that officer suppose to ignore the apparent shapes outlined in the bag because of the fourth Amendment. Such an expectation is clearly unreasonable though courts have been know to rule otherwise. The same goes if you leave a bag unattended at a train station can you expect it not to be seized if only to turn it into lost and found or examine it to make sure it is not a bomb. Now the way it is applied in this case I do find bothersome. At work I have areas that are “mine” and I do hope that no one will search through or seize my property in these areas but unless they are locked up there is a reasonable chance individuals may steal, vandalize or trespass onto my property. Despite this I consider myself rational to expect others to respect my right to property under these circumstances. Legally since my place of work has authority over the workplace I am technically leasing the area from the organization I work for and because of that they can allow search or seizer of my property and this can even extend to my body under certain situations. This extension does not allow a search of my person on the items attended to me such as luggage. The clientele at a place of business are also subject to the right of property of that business which explains how a bouncer can legally expel someone from a nightclub. The extension of this ideal is that if you are on government owned property the judgment is the governments. What I am getting at is that contrary to the majority decision that even in a place of business or someone else’s home you have a reasonable expectation of privacy subject to the owners judgment.


Nerveless I agree with the outcome of this case and to a fair extent several of the Justices in that simply because the right to property violated, if any, in this case was both that of the lessee and the landowner and not those whom were temporarily using it. It is true that they temporarily subleased it from the lessee but since the payment medium and the terms of that sublease were illegal the sublease is rendered null and void. Since they have no lease then the can have no property rights in relation to the officer’s action and therefore they have no standing on this issue.