Also known as: traffics · trafficked · trafficking · traffic law · traffic violation · road traffic
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
2 senses
Vehicular movement along roads or highways.
Commercial exchange or dealing in goods, especially across state lines or in controlled substances.
Each sense below has its own examples, sources, and questions.
Vehicular movement along roads or highways.
Theo Thomas is pulled over for speeding on the highway. While the officer writes the ticket, a second officer walks a trained dog around the car exterior. The dog alerts, leading to a search that uncovers contraband without extending the stop duration.
Tanner Thompson rides as a passenger in a vehicle stopped for a broken taillight. The officer orders Tanner out of the car for safety reasons even though no suspicion attaches to him personally. The order keeps the encounter brief and focused on the original violation.
Commercial exchange or dealing in goods, especially across state lines or in controlled substances.
Theodore Tucker grows marijuana plants in his backyard for personal medical use under state law. Federal agents arrive and seize the plants during an investigation into broader distribution networks. The court upholds the seizure because the activity forms part of an aggregated economic scheme affecting national markets.
Timothy Tang carries a firearm near a school. Prosecutors charge him under a federal statute. The court examines whether the prohibition regulates channels or instrumentalities of commerce or substantially affects interstate traffic in guns.
Tristan Thompson drives with a cracked windshield. An officer stops the car for the equipment violation while suspecting unrelated criminal activity. The stop remains valid because probable cause exists for the observed traffic infraction regardless of the officer's additional motives.
Talia Torres lives with her grandson in a single-family home under a city ordinance restricting occupancy to nuclear family members. The ordinance aims to limit traffic and parking congestion but the court reviews whether the restriction arbitrarily intrudes on family living arrangements.
In early 1973, Mrs. Inez Moore received a notice of violation from the city of East Cleveland. The notice stated that her grandson John Moore, Jr., was an illegal occupant of her home. It directed her to comply with the housing ordinance. Mrs. Moore lived in her East Cleveland home together with her son Dale Moore, Sr., and her two grandsons Dale Moore, Jr., and John Moore, Jr. John came to live with her after his mother's death when he was less than one year old. When she failed to remove John from the home, the city filed a criminal charge against her. Mrs. Moore moved to dismiss the charge. She claimed that the ordinance was constitutionally invalid on its face. Her motion was overruled. Upon conviction she was sentenced to five days in jail and a $25 fine. The East Cleveland ordinance limited occupancy of a dwelling unit to members of a single family. The ordinance defined family to include only a husband or wife of the nominal head of the household, unmarried children of the head or spouse provided they have no children residing with them, a parent of the head or spouse, or not more than one dependent child of the head or spouse along with that child's spouse and dependent children. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction after giving full consideration to her constitutional claims. The Ohio Supreme Court denied review of the case. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction of her appeal.
View case3 common questions
No. A dog sniff performed on the exterior of a vehicle during a lawful traffic stop that is not extended beyond the time required to address the original violation does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Yes. Officers may order passengers out of a lawfully stopped vehicle for officer safety even without any particularized suspicion that the passengers pose a danger.
No. A traffic stop remains reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when officers have probable cause to believe a traffic violation occurred, regardless of any subjective desire to investigate other crimes.
In March 1992, Alfonso Lopez, Jr., a twelfth-grade student at Edison High School in San Antonio, Texas, arrived at school carrying a concealed .38-caliber handgun and five bullets. Acting on an anonymous tip, school authorities confronted Lopez, who admitted possessing the weapon. Local police arrested him and charged him under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The following day, state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. A federal grand jury indicted him on one count of knowing possession of a firearm at a school zone. Lopez moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the statute exceeded Congress's power to legislate control over public schools. The district court denied the motion, concluding that the statute was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to regulate activities affecting commerce because the business of schools affects interstate commerce. After a bench trial, the court found Lopez guilty and sentenced him to six months' imprisonment and two years of supervised release. Lopez appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which reversed the conviction, holding that the statute was beyond Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.
View case…Justice Marshall, first defined the nature of that power in Gibbons v. Ogden , 9 Wheat. 1 (1824): “Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more: it is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for…