BALANCING GOVERNMENT NECESSITY AND PUBLIC-EMPLOYEE PRIVACY - RECONSTRUCTING THE 4TH-AMENDMENT THROUGH THE SPECIAL NEEDS DOCTRINE

In the mid 1980s the Rehnquist court introduced a new constitutional d octrine making the Fourth Amendment's warrant and probably cause requi rements dispensable when the government establishes a legitimate ''spe cial need '' The new doctrine has been employed to allow, among other ''special needs, '' large-scale public employee drug testing programs that courts, applying traditional constitutional analysis, had previou sly struck down. Analysis of judicial implementation of the new doctri ne suggests the Supreme Court's broad characterization of government's special needs may be poorly reasoned and ultimately may be constituti onally flawed An assessment of the doctrine suggests that it is predic ated on traditionalist perceptions of management roles, and that it re inforces those roles.