law school for rappers

An American attorney examines the lyrics of Jay-Z's 99 Problems and finds that the rapper's grasp of the Fourth Amendment leaves much to be desired:

License and registration and step out of the car
"Are you carryin' a weapon on you I know a lot of you are"
I ain't steppin out of shit all my papers legit

This is a major misunderstanding of constitutional rights to the extent that it could result in an arrest (and more importantly an inventory search of the vehicle or search incident to arrest). In Maryland v. Wilson (1997) the Supreme Court held that where an officer makes a legal traffic stop he may legally order occupants to step out of the car. Failure to comply with this lawful order would be a criminal offense in most states. The legality of the officer's order is not in any way dependent on the legality of Jay-Z's "papers".

Read the full analysis here.

Comments

[Marie]

I think it's probably just as well that nobody has done a legal analysis of the original Ice T version of 99 Problems.