Fourth Amendment Stipulates That No

¶ … Fourth Amendment stipulates that no unwarranted search should be done without soliciting a person's permission. Search and arrest is limited in scope and circumscribed by certain regulations.

The importance of this Fourth Amendment may be best realized by recourse to its history where it was famously, perhaps mythically, initiated by a British nobleman who asserted that "The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose." Even the king could not intrude without soliciting the subject's permission.

Imagine what that did to the 'ordinary citizen of England who realized that the greatest monarch of his time whom he pledged his life and duty to was prohibited, in certain ways, from going too far and had to respect his privacy! It must have accorded the individual a certain modicum of security and confidence. And these are the two bastions of the Fourth Amendment.

Putting ourselves in the 16th century British peasant's shoes: he was standing there in the courtroom and heard the legal ruling which promulgated that from thence on, each and every citizen would have protection from having his rights violated and that this ruling extended even to the monarch himself. The feeling must have been one of tremendous relief and security that he was accorded a certain protection in this country of his and could seek refuge in his 'castle'. Moreover, the sentiment too must have been of greater self-respect and confidence in that his individuality and privacy was being acknowledged and that he, too, was a person whom even the monarch could not disturb within certain bounds.

These two sentiments are the arbiters of the Fourth Amendment and are the two sentiments that give the fourth Amendment its strength up to today. They are in fact the principles on which the American democracy and constitution stands.

Long ago, philosophers such as Hobbes and Rousseau argued that people created a state in order to band together and seek protection. The mission of the state, or government, accordingly, was to provide them with this protection, and the power of the monarch or ruler existed solely in order to protect and care for his people. In time, that power became despotic and egoistic causing people to become subjects in their literal term -- namely objects to the monarch whom the monarch could do with as they wished.

The American nation was structured in such a way so as to correct for previous errors. Its constitution was scripted as democracy and founded on the principles of these philosophers. The government was triggered for the sake of the people. People had honor and dignity. each person was important, and the privacy and dignity of each had to be respected.

Given the ambitions of man and man's love for power, it is all too easy for man to rise to positions of power and dominate others. The Fourth Amendment is important in that it protects the honor and asserts the significance of even the 'least' individual in the country. In this way, the Fourth Amendment prevents the situation of a Fuhrer or Third Reich happening on this soil since certain safeguards are put into place that have to be kept at all costs.

Further indications of the importance of this Amendment can also be seen from the instance when Jentick, an Earl of Camden, was indicted for attacking both government polices and the monarch. His private papers were ruffled and searched and Entick lodged a complaint saying that all papers, not just probably sseditious ones, had been seized. Entick won the case and established the british precedent of ensuring that the executive was limited in intruding on British property by common law. This law gave the citizen some modicum of privacy and security knowing that he could appeal to certain rights in order to protect his dignity.

Paradoxically, until the 1760s, there was in Colonial America, according to William Cuddihy (1990), a "colonial epidemic of general searches" and, in America of then, "man's house was even less of a legal castle in America than in England" as the authorities possessed almost unlimited power.