ARBITRARY SEARCHES AND SEIZURES
273
ARBITRARY SEARCHES AND SEIZURES AS APPLIED TO MODERN INDUSTRY BY ANDREW ALEXANDER BRUCE. THE fourth amendment to the Federal consent gives up that right for the sake of Constitution, which guarantees to the justice and the general good. By the laws people of the United^ States the right of of England every invasion of private prop security in their persons, houses, papers, erty, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. and effects against unreasonable searches No man can set his foot upon my ground and seizures, and which has been reenacted without license If he admits the into the constitutions of all of the American fact he is bound to show by way of justifi states, is nothing more or less than a declara cation that some positive law has justified tion of the English common law as it existed or excused him. . . . The case of search or was presumed to exist at the time of ing for stolen goods crept into the law by the adoption of that instrument.1 It was imperceptible practice. No less a person the doctrine of the famous Wilkes2 and than my Lord Coke denied its legality. . . . Entick3 cases, which were decided in Eng- Observe, too, the caution with which the Jand in 1763 and 1765 respectively, and law proceeds in this singular case. There which have been justly considered land must be a full charge upon oath of a theft marks not only in English but in American committed. The owner must swear that history. In both cases damages were re the goods are lodged in such a place. He covered for breaking into private houses and must attend at the execution of the warrant seizing and carrying away private papers to show them to the officer. ... I wish under the pretext that the same were some cases had been shown where the treasonous and libelous, and in both cases law forceth evidence out of the owner's an individualistic doctrine was enunciated custody by process." These decisions were and the theory of the social compact set handed down in the midst of the great forth. " The great end for which men struggle of the American colonists for con entered into society," said Lord Camden,4 stitutional liberty. They were welcomed "was to secure their property; that right and applauded perhaps more in America is secured sacred and incommunicable in than in England itself. Every American all instances where it has not been taken statesman during the revolutionary and away or abridged by some public law for formative period of the nation was familiar the good of the whole. The cases where with them and considered them as the true this right of property is set aside by posi and ultimate expression of constitutional tive law are various. Distresses, execu law. Arbitrary searches and seizures, in tions, forfeitures, taxes, etc., are all of this deed, were in a large measure the proxi description, -wherein every man by common mate cause of the American revolution. Prior to the rendering of the judgments 1 See opinion of Lord Camden in Entick v. referred to, James Otis in a fiery speech Carrington, 19 Howell's State Trials, 1029; The delivered in Boston in 1761 had pronounced Case of John "Wilkes, 19 Id. 981; Opinion in Boyd the writs of assistance which were then
- . U. S. 116 U. S. 616.
being freely issued to revenue and other J 19 Howell's State Trials, 981. inferior officers as "the worst instruments
- 19 Howell's State Trials, 1029.
of arbitrary power, the most destructive of 4 See opinion in Entick v. Carrington, 19 How English liberty and the fundamental prin ell's State Trials, ioap; Boyd v. U. S., 116 U. S. ciples of English law that ever were found 616. 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 530.
