Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 80

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

9 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

stalwart  proponent  of  construing  the  Fourth  Amendment
liberally—acknowledged  that  “under  any  ordinary  con-
struction  of  language,”  “there  is  no  ‘search’  or  ‘seizure’ 
when  a  defendant  is  required  to  produce  a  document  in
the  orderly  process  of  a  court’s  procedure.”    Olmstead  v. 
United  States,  277  U. S.  438,  476  (1928)  (dissenting 
opinion).1 

Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  believe  that  the  Founders 
intended the Fourth Amendment to regulate courts’ use of 
compulsory  process.  American  colonists  rebelled  against 
the  Crown’s  physical  invasions  of  their  persons  and  their 
property, not against its acquisition of information by any 
and all means.  As Justice Black once put it, “[t]he Fourth
Amendment was aimed directly at the abhorred practice of 
breaking  in,  ransacking  and  searching  homes  and  other 
buildings and seizing people’s personal belongings without 
warrants  issued  by  magistrates.”  Katz,  389  U. S.,  at  367 
(dissenting  opinion).  More  recently,  we  have  acknowl-
edged  that  “the  Fourth  Amendment  was  the  founding
generation’s response to the reviled ‘general warrants’ and
‘writs  of  assistance’  of  the  colonial  era,  which  allowed 

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1 Any other interpretation of the Fourth Amendment’s text would run 
into insuperable problems because it would apply not only to subpoenas 
duces tecum but to all other forms of compulsory process as well.  If the 
Fourth  Amendment  applies  to  the  compelled  production  of  documents,
then  it  must  also  apply  to  the  compelled  production  of  testimony—an
outcome that we have repeatedly rejected and which, if accepted, would 
send  much  of  the  field  of  criminal  procedure  into  a  tailspin.    See, e.g., 
United  States  v.  Dionisio,  410  U. S.  1,  9  (1973)  (“It  is  clear  that  a
subpoena to appear before a grand jury is not a ‘seizure’ in the Fourth 
Amendment sense, even though that summons may be inconvenient or
burdensome”);  United  States  v.  Calandra,  414  U. S.  338,  354  (1974) 
(“Grand  jury  questions  . . .  involve  no  independent  governmental
invasion  of  one’s  person,  house,  papers,  or  effects”).    As  a  matter  of 
original  understanding,  a  subpoena  duces  tecum  no  more  effects  a 
“search”  or  “seizure”  of  papers  within  the  meaning  of  the  Fourth 
Amendment  than  a  subpoena  ad  testificandum  effects  a  “search”  or 
“seizure” of a person.