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The Fourth Amendment is one of the most impactful constitutional amendments, with key implications throughout all 250 years of America’s history. The amendment provides people the right to not have their “persons, houses, papers, and effects”, or in today’s terms, themselves, their home, their papers, or any other property, searched or seized/detained by the government. In order for the government to do so, they must have a search warrant or probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed.
The amendment additionally states that any search warrant must be specific in describing what can be searched or seized by the government.This amendment is primarily in response to “writs of assistance”, which were general search warrants that allowed officials to search any location they deemed suspicious, issued by the British before the revolution. This allowed British officials to search essentially anything they wanted, allowing them to become massively intrusive and invade the privacy of colonists.
The fourth amendment was made to ensure that these abusive and unjust practices were not replicated by the new American government, and made sure that a point of revolutionary outrage was addressed in the Constitution. The requirement for search warrants to be highly specific made by the amendment is in direct response to the writs, as the Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that officials could not abuse search warrants to unnecessarily invade privacy. In the nearly 250 years since the amendment was written, security, law enforcement, and technology have changed in ways unimaginable to the Founding Fathers, leaving it up to the courts to interpret the amendment and apply it to new situations. The most important fourth amendment case was Weeks vs United States in 1914, in which Weeks argued that the items that were seized from him illegally could not legally be used against him in court.
The court sided unanimously with Weeks, ruling that any illegally acquired evidence could not be used in court. This case created a consequence for violating the fourth amendment, and without it, the rights it provides could not be effectively upheld. More recent cases like Kyllo vs United States in 2001, in which Kyllo argued that the police’s use of thermal scans on his home without a warrant was a violation of the fourth amendment, and won. Cases like this one have allowed the fourth amendment to evolve and protect the people against new technology or policing practices.
Justices dissenting in cases like these will often argue the originalist interpretation of the amendment, arguing that we should only consider the amendment within the scope of the era in which it was created. I, as well as the majority of legal scholars, disagree with this theory, and believe that evolving fourth amendment protections is necessary to protect rights. One potential way to further protect people’s fourth amendment rights would be to encourage congress to create laws around new security practices or technologies to enforce compliance with the fourth amendment, as the courts can only step in once a violation has already occurred. But as long as our legal system stands, the fourth amendment will continue to protect the American people for years to come.
