I found this great legal site on google, Cornell Law school puts it out, on the Constitution of the United States, when i was looking something up about our constitution and treaties for another thread that I was responding to.

Anyway, in this same other thread, it is being discussed whether our gvt has the right to do general searches on us or invade our castles so to say, without probable cause....can they do sweeps, where innocent people's privacy is invaded, even if never to be released by our gvt?

Soooooooo, being the one with an inquiring mind , I looked up the fourth amendment on this site and started reviewing it and found this history spot and alot of other information about this amendment, including the background.

I have put in bold, and underligned, and even enlarged parts of this History section that I think are important to note and easy to put in to today's situations of the Nsa surveilences, the phone company/gvt sweeps with their tapping, and a number of other things.

There is much more on this at the link: http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/ht...html#amdt4_hd7 going in to all kinds of cases that made it to court, defining the Amendment....


Anyway, i think all of us would benefit from reading each of our Bill of Rights amendments and how they came about...the history of them... and then maybe we could have some hard core discussions on searches without warrant by our gvt, and whether or not they are really constitutional to do on anyone in the united states legally or illegally, from the way it appears to me....it is not constitutional...

jd



FOURTH AMENDMENT
SEARCH AND SEIZURE
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.

SEARCH AND SEIZURE
History and Scope of the Amendment

History.—Few provisions of the Bill of Rights grew so directly out of the experience of the colonials as the Fourth Amendment, embodying as it did the protection against the utilization of the “writs of assistance.” But while the insistence on freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures as a fundamental right gained expression in the Colonies late and as a result of experience,1 there was also a rich English experience to draw on.

“Every man’s house is his castle” was a maxim much celebrated in England, as was demonstrated in Semayne’s Case, decided in 1603.

2 A civil case of execution of process, Semayne’s Case nonetheless recognized the right of the homeowner to defend his house against unlawful entry even by the King’s agents, but at the same time recognized the authority of the appropriate officers to break and enter upon notice in order to arrest or to execute the King’s process.

Most famous of the English cases was Entick v. Carrington,3 one of a series of civil actions against state officers who, pursuant to general warrants, had raided many homes and other places in search of materials[p.1200]connected with John Wilkes’ polemical pamphlets attacking not only governmental policies but the King himself.4

Entick, an associate of Wilkes, sued because agents had forcibly broken into his house, broken into locked desks and boxes, and seized many printed charts, pamphlets and the like.

In an opinion, sweeping in terms, the court declared the warrant and the behavior it authorized subversive “of all the comforts of society,” and the issuance of a warrant for the seizure of all of a person’s papers rather than only those alleged to be criminal in nature “contrary to the genius of the law of England.”5 Besides its general character, said the court, the warrant was bad because it was not issued on a showing of probable cause and no record was required to be made of what had been seized. Entick v. Carrington, the Supreme Court has said, is a “great judgment,” “one of the landmarks of English liberty,” “one of the permanent monuments of the British Constitution,” and a guide to an understanding of what the Framers meant in writing the Fourth Amendment.6

In the colonies, smuggling rather than seditious libel afforded the leading examples of the necessity for protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. In order to enforce the revenue laws, English authorities made use of writs of assistance, which were general warrants authorizing the bearer to enter any house or other place to search for and seize “prohibited and uncustomed” goods, and commanding all subjects to assist in these endeavors. The writs once issued remained in force throughout the lifetime of the sovereign and six months thereafter.

When, upon the death of George II in 1760, the authorities were required to obtain the issuance of new writs, opposition was led by James Otis, who attacked such writs on libertarian grounds and who asserted the invalidity of the authorizing statutes because they conflicted with English constitutionalism.7 Otis lost and the writs were issued and utilized, but his arguments were much cited in the colonies not only on the immediate subject but also with regard to judicial review.


Scope of the Amendment.

—The language of the provision which became the Fourth Amendment underwent some modest[p.1201]changes on its passage through the Congress, and it is possible that the changes reflected more than a modest significance in the interpretation of the relationship of the two clauses. Madison’s introduced version provided “The rights to be secured in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their other property, from all unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated by warrants issued without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, or not particularly describing the places to be searched, or the persons or things to be seized.”

8 As reported from committee, with an inadvertent omission corrected on the floor,9 the section was almost identical to the introduced version, and the House defeated a motion to substitute “and no warrant shall issue” for “by warrants issuing” in the committee draft. In some fashion, the rejected amendment was inserted in the language before passage by the House and is the language of the ratified constitutional provision.10

As noted above, the noteworthy disputes over search and seizure in England and the colonies revolved about the character of warrants. There were, however, lawful warrantless searches, primarily searches incident to arrest, and these apparently gave rise to no disputes. Thus, the question arises whether the Fourth Amendment’s two clauses must be read together to mean that the only searches and seizures which are “reasonable” are those which meet the requirements of the second clause, that is, are pursuant to warrants issued under the prescribed safeguards, or whether the two clauses are independent, so that searches under warrant must comply with the second clause but that there are “reasonable” searches under the first clause which need not comply with the second clause.11 This issue has divided the Court for some time, has[p.1202]seen several reversals of precedents, and is important for the resolution of many cases. It is a dispute which has run most consistently throughout the cases involving the scope of the right to search incident to arrest.12 While the right to search the person of the arrestee without a warrant is unquestioned, how far afield into areas within and without the control of the arrestee a search may range is an interesting and crucial matter.

CONTINUED HERE:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/ht...html#amdt4_hd7