Fourth Amendment: History, Search and Seizure Law Explained

Fourth Amendment Background

The Fourth Amendment protects people's right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and personal effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. It further provides that no warrants shall be issued except upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and describing particularly the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Like most fields of U.S. law, the English common law forms the principal basis of the Fourth Amendment. Broadly, it was created to limit governmental powers and the capacity of the state to enforce legal actions upon citizens. Amendment IV was implemented as a direct reaction to the historical abuse of writs of assistance — a type of general governmental search warrant employed during the era of the American Revolution. The Amendment was created to limit law enforcement powers when searching any American resident's personal property.

The Fourth Amendment falls under the Bill of Rights — the first ten Constitutional Amendments — which together provide the framework for defining individual freedoms. These Amendments were proposed and directed to the states during the first Congressional session of America's First Congress, under President George Washington's presidency, and were ratified on December 15, 1791. James Madison introduced them as a collection of statutory articles, which became effective as Amendments after ratification by 75% of the states.

Amendment IV constitutes the richest source of American constitutional litigation, particularly following its incorporation against the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It has a tremendously broad reach: of the several million arrests made each year in the United States, each one marks a Fourth Amendment event. Similarly, all searches of private areas or individuals by public officials — whether police officers, schoolteachers, airport security officers, crossing guards, or probation officers — implicate the Amendment. The Fourth Amendment serves as a constitutional guardian of individuals' privacy when it is diminished by a governmental search or seizure. It safeguards citizens' legitimate privacy expectations. In law, the term "legitimate" implies a genuine expectation of individual privacy that society considers "reasonable." Defining this phrase has generated considerable litigation under the Amendment's reasonableness clause.

The Constitutional Founders' attention to protecting citizens against unwarranted searches and seizures — and to mandating the production of particularized warrants under the Amendment's Warrant Clause — stems from three famous eighteenth-century cases, one from a colony and two from Britain. The two English cases, Wilkes v. Wood and Entick v. Carrington, involved pamphleteers who opposed the government. They were apprehended and their papers and books seized. Law enforcement used warrants that did not specify the places to be searched or the names of the suspects. Seizing agents were sued by both defendants for trespass, and both cases were decided in favor of Wilkes and Entick.