Interpretation: The Fourth Amendment (Constitution Center)
Fourth Amendment Overview (Cornell Law School)
When Can't the Fourth Amendment Protect my Privacy? (Nolo)
Fourth Amendment (Annenberg Classroom)
Search and Seizure (Encyclopedia Britannica)
What Does the Fourth Amendment Mean? (US Courts)
Search Warrants: What They Are and When They're Necessary (Nolo)
Introduced in 1789, what became the Fourth Amendment struck at the heart of a matter central to the early American experience: the principle that, within reason, “Every man’s house is his castle,” and that any citizen may fall into the category of the criminally accused and ought to be provided protections accordingly. In U.S. constitutional law, the Fourth Amendment is the foundation of criminal law jurisprudence, articulating both the rights of persons and the responsibilities of law-enforcement officials. The balance between these two forces has undergone considerable public, political, and judicial debate. Are the amendment’s two clauses meant to be applied independently or taken as a whole? Is the expectation of privacy diminished depending on where and what is suspected, sought, and seized? What constitutes an “unreasonable” search and seizure?
The protections contained in the amendment have been determined less on the basis of what the Constitution says than according to what it has been interpreted to mean, and, as such, its constitutional meaning has inherently been fluid. The protections granted by the U.S. Supreme Court have expanded during periods when the court was dominated by liberals (e.g., during the tenure of Chief Justice Earl Warren [1953–69]), beginning particularly with Mapp v. Ohio (1961), in which the court extended the exclusionary rule to all criminal proceedings; by contrast, during the tenure of the conservative William Rehnquist (1986–2005) as chief justice, the court contracted the rights afforded to the criminally accused, allowing law-enforcement officials latitude to search in instances when they reasonably believed that the property in question harboured presumably dangerous persons. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
In Harris v. United States, it approved as reasonable the warrantless search of a four-room apartment pursuant to the arrest of the man found there. A year later, however, a reconstituted Court majority set aside a conviction based on evidence seized by a warrantless search pursuant to an arrest and adopted the cardinal rule that, in seizing goods and articles, law enforcement agents must secure and use search warrants wherever reasonably practicable. This rule was set aside two years later by another reconstituted majority, which adopted the premise that the test is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable. Whether a search is reasonable, the Court said, must find resolution in the facts and circumstances of each case. However, the Court soon returned to its emphasis upon the warrant. The [Fourth] Amendment was in large part a reaction to the general warrants and warrantless searches that had so alienated the colonists and had helped speed the movement for independence. In the scheme of the Amendment, therefore, the requirement that ‘no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,’ plays a crucial part. Therefore, the police must, whenever practicable, obtain advance judicial approval of searches and seizures through a warrant procedure. Exceptions to searches under warrants were to be closely contained by the rationale undergirding the necessity for the exception, and the scope of a search under one of the exceptions was similarly limited.
During the 1970s the Court was closely divided on which standard to apply. For a while, the balance tipped in favor of the view that warrantless searches are per se unreasonable, with a few carefully prescribed exceptions. Gradually, guided by the variable-expectation-of-privacy approach to coverage of the Fourth Amendment, the Court broadened its view of permissible exceptions and of the scope of those exceptions. By 1992, it was no longer the case that the warrants-with-narrow-exceptions standard normally prevails over a reasonableness approach. Exceptions to the warrant requirement have multiplied, tending to confine application of the requirement to cases that are exclusively criminal in nature. And even within that core area of criminal cases, some exceptions have been broadened. Continue reading from Constitution Annotated
