Originally Posted by SPN Lifer
I don't disagree with your constitutional analysis,
PTravel, as a general matter. I was just pointing out, however, that reasonableness of a customs search under the Fourth Amendment is practically unlimited at the border. You are free to cite some First Amendment cases defining the outer limits of such inspections if it is that important to you, but border searches by the sovereign were a long-standing practice at the time of the Constitution and not significantly limited by it. I think we are talking past each other, and would both like the other to be our "temporary law clerk."
As you note, I think we are talking past each other.
I've never questioned the constitutionality of border searches. I was focused, solely, on the prohibition against importation of "immoral" material in the statute. Any Customs agent who seized, for example, the copy of Catcher in the Rye that I bought overseas on the grounds that it was immoral would, in my opinion, have committed a First Amendment violation, at least, and probably a Fifth Amendment violation as well (it's not "due process of law" if the standard applied is, itself, illegal).