Fourth Amendment

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 The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution outlines the powers of the police to search and seize the property of citizens. At the time of its ratification, December 15, 1791, two forms of search in the colonies and England infringed on people’s privacy. In England, “general warrants” allowed royal officials to search a person’s belongings upon suspicion of political opposition. In the colonies, “writs of assistance” allowed customhouse officers, sheriffs, constables, and other officials to search any house for smuggled goods without specifying the house or the goods. The Fourth Amendment limits government power to seize and search people, their property, and their homes. Some cases require warrants to conduct searches, while probable cause is enough for others. To obtain a warrant, the government must show probable cause—a certain level of suspicion of criminal activity—to justify the search. 

The Palmer Raids of 1920 are an example of how the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted in divergent ways. After the Russian Revolution, which establish a communist state, Americans feared a similar domestic revolution. The Red Scare, lasting from 1970 to 1920, was a widespread fear of immigrants creating a rise in anarchism, communism, and radical leftist ideologies. To reduce the number of immigrants, the U.S. Department of Justice, led by A. Mitchell Palmer, conducted a series of arrests known as the Palmer Raids. Those detained were suspected of sympathizing with communists or anarchists. Many immigrants, merely speaking with an accent, were arrested, surpassing the number of warrants issued. The arrests were lawful, the department argued, because the suspects supported overthrowing the government. Prominent lawyers and legal scholars argued that the arrests were unconstitutional. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Ernst Freund, and Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound wrote that the Department lacked warrants, allowed officers to use unrestrained force, and  seize documents at will.

The Fourth Amendment states what cannot happen in cases of search and seizure, but not what will happen if it is violated. The 1920s Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States court case illustrates how the Fourth Amendment has been breached, then debated. Silverthorne attempted to evade paying taxes, so Federal officers searched the company’s office and copied various documents “without a shadow of authority” said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. The court’s ruling held that illegally copied evidence was tainted, so the government couldn’t use it to frame a new indictment or prosecute. This is the exclusionary rule, prohibiting evidence unconstitutionally obtained to be used in court. If tainted evidence were allowed, Holmes’s ruling held, the police would attempt to find ways around the Fourth Amendment. The case illustrates how the parameters of the Fourth Amendment have been expanded and reinterpreted since its ratification.

The Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with the requirement of warrants based on probable cause, exemplifies the Founding Father’s commitment to limiting the power of the government and protecting individual rights. This relates to Enlightenment thinker Baron de Montesquieu’s theory of separation of powers, which heavily influenced the U.S. Constitution. Montesquieu advocated for a system of checks and balances, where power is divided among several branches. This aimed to prevent a single individual or group from gaining too much power, which would protect the rights of the people. I find Justice Holmes’s interpretation persuasive and believe that while the amendment does not need change, fairly recent cases before the Supreme Court involving police searching vehicles without warrants have undermined this right. So perhaps there must be changes made to further enforce the fourth amendment. 

Works Cited

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Writ of Assistance.” In

    Encyclopaedia Britannica. Last modified February 28, 2020.

     https://www.britannica.com/topic/writ-of-assistance.

Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. “Silverthorne Lumber Co. V. United

     States 251 U.S. 385 (1920).” In Encyclopedia of the American Constitution.

     Last modified may 25, 2023. https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/

     encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/

     Silverthorne-lumber-co-v-united-states-251-us-385-1920.  

Friedman, Barry, and Orin Kerr. “The Fourth Amendment.” In National Constitution

     Center. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/

     amendment-iv/interpretations/121. 

 

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