Policing the Open Road is a beautifully written book that moves seamlessly from doctrinal analysis to exploration of themes in popular culture, like Jay-Z’s song, “99 Problems.” The legal history will be of interest to criminal law scholars and historians of policing. Yet, Seo is also particularly adept at clearly explaining legal concepts for those not so versed in Fourth Amendment doctrine, and the book is readily accessible to those more generally curious about how we came to live in a Driving While Black—even Parking While Black—society. Her history of cars and the Fourth Amendment also provides crucial context for considering the public and private nature of new searchable private property like cell phones connected to the public information superhighway. Seo has convinced me that even if the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence solved one generation’s problem, we need to start “defining freedom anew” for this generation (275).Read on here.
-- Karen Tani
