University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Dean Sophia Lee recently published an article in The University of Chicago Law Review about the Fourth Amendment rights to privacy.
Her 90-page article consists of five parts that trace the evolution of Fourth Amendment privacy from weak pre-Reconstruction protections through its development over the years, culminating in Boyd v. United States. The article revisits the source of the phrase “privacies of life” and applies it to protecting personal information in the digital age.
In the article, Lee argued that the modern conception of Fourth Amendment privacy protections originate not with the Founding Fathers but with Reconstruction-era politics. The 1886 Supreme Court case Boyd v. United States has traditionally been linked to the Court’s later deregulatory Lochner v. New York era, but Lee wrote that Boyd’s emphasis on “the privacies of life” arose from efforts to dismantle Reconstruction and reinforce racial hierarchy.
Lee continued that “with Boyd’s Fourth Amendment catchphrase newly influential, the time is ripe for revisiting its doctrinal and political roots.” She emphasized how the U.S. Congress — not courts — first connected the Fourth Amendment to privacy when restricting tax surveillance powers in the 1860s and 1870s.
Moreover, according to Lee, Boyd's reasoning drew from this legislative history and was influenced by the political reconciliation between northern Republicans and southern Democrats — in a move that sought to preserve white supremacy while reducing federal oversight.
She further critiqued modern libertarian arguments that attack the administrative state as a product of Jim Crow, noting that Boyd’s own roots are similarly tainted.
Our current understanding of Fourth Amendment privacy, according to Lee, was shaped by the politics of Reconstruction, and this history still influences debates on surveillance, data privacy and government power today.
Lee joined the Penn Carey Law faculty in 2009 as an assistant professor of law. Lee previously served as deputy dean from 2015-2017 and became the first female dean of the school in July of 2023. She is also currently the Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law.
A leading legal historian, Lee focuses her research on administrative and constitutional law, using history to contextualize legal developments and describe how the past informs the future.
In addition to serving as dean of Penn Carey Law, Lee is an award-winning educator. She has received Penn Carey Law’s Harvey Levin Memorial Teaching Award, A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course, and Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching. Lee’s courses include “History of Privacy and the Law,” “Black Lives Matter in Historical Perspective,” and courses on constitutional history and theory. She has held memberships in the American Society for Legal History and the Labor and Working Class History Association.
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