The Hoover Institution Center for Revitalizing American Institutions webinar series features speakers who are developing innovative ideas, conducting groundbreaking research, and taking important actions to improve trust and efficacy in American institutions. Speaker expertise and topics span governmental institutions, civic organizations and practice, and the role of public opinion and culture in shaping our democracy. The webinar series builds awareness about how we can individually and collectively revitalize American institutions to ensure our country’s democracy delivers on its promise.
The Center for Revitalizing American Institutions (RAI) hosted The Digital Fourth Amendment with Orin Kerr and Eugene Volokh on October 1, 2025, from 10:00-11:00 a.m. PT.
This webinar examined how digital technologies have reshaped the way courts interpret constitutional protections against government searches. As daily life leaves more digital traces, traditional legal rules often lag behind modern realities. The conversation will explore recent rulings, their impact on privacy rights, and principles that could guide more consistent protections in the future.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Orin Kerr is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford Law School. Kerr helped found the field of computer crime law, which studies how traditional legal doctrines should adapt to digital crime and digital evidence. He is widely considered a leading authority on the Fourth Amendment. Kerr has written more than seventy-five law review articles in addition to authoring casebooks and treatise chapters. His latest book is The Digital Fourth Amendment (Oxford University Press, 2025). Kerr’s scholarship has been cited in over 400 judicial decisions, including several US Supreme Court opinions. Before entering academia, Kerr was a trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the US Department of Justice. He served as a law clerk to Judge Leonard I. Garth of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the US Supreme Court.
Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before coming to Hoover, Eugene spent 30 years as a professor at UCLA School of Law, where he taught First Amendment law, copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and firearms regulation policy. He is a member of the American Law Institute and of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, and the founder and coauthor of The Volokh Conspiracy, a leading legal blog. His work has been cited in more than 350 court opinions, including ten Supreme Court cases, as well as over 5,000 academic articles. He has also filed briefs (mostly amicus briefs) in over 200 cases and has argued in over 40 appellate cases in state and federal courts throughout the country.
