FOURTH AMENDMENT
The fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United State was added on December 15, 1791, as part of the Bill of Rights. The bill requires the authority to have a properly executed search warrants when searching for peoples’ homes and private properties. The right was first identified by Sir Edward Coke in 1604. According to Kerr, 2013, the fourth Amendment is brief just like other constitutional amendments. The courts provide the details on when and how the protections apply. The fourth amendment states: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
During British Colonial control of the territories that later became the United State. In 1760, they issued “writs of assistance” to increase their control. The laws gave The British officials a blanket warrant to seize and search any goods that looked suspicious in ports everywhere within the western colonies. This was however seen to be an overreach, and it leads to unreasonable seizures and searches and in turn angered many colonists. Even though the ratification of the fourth amendment brought a stop to the many doubts regarding the validity of the writs of assistance in the United States, some questions were brought about by the fourth amendment concerning the meaning of the terms “unreasonable,” search or seizure,” “warrant,” “probable cause,” besides many other questions regarding the scope of the terms as “houses, effects, and papers.”
The Supreme Court of the United States, states courts and lower federal courts have spent over 200 years trying to figure out the questions that were raised by the Fourth Amendment text. The Courts are still faced with such questions due to the many cases that are being brought before them.
References
Kerr, O. S. (2013). The Curious History of Fourth Amendment Searches. The Supreme Court Review, 2012(1), 67-97.