Professor Laura Donohue gave a lecture to fellows at the Georgetown Law Constitution Center on November 6, 2025 titled Open Fields Doctrine: Holmes and his Legacy.
Professor Donohue discussed the Open Fields Doctrine, a longstanding principle of Fourth Amendment law holding that the government’s intrusion onto open fields does not constitute a “search.” This doctrine is increasingly relevant in the age of surveillance technology, drones, and data-driven policing, as courts grapple with how traditional understandings of “privacy” apply to vast tracts of private land and modern investigative tools. It was an illuminating conversation about how constitutional protections adapt to new contexts.
