Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 84

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

13 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

“the  Fourth  and  Fifth  Amendments  run  almost  into  each 
other.”  Id.,  at  630.    Having  equated  compulsory  process
with actual searches and seizures and having melded the
Fourth  Amendment  with  the  Fifth,  the  Court  then  found 
the  order  at  issue  unconstitutional  because  it  compelled 
the  production  of  property  to  which  the  Government  did 
not have superior title.  See id., at 622–630. 

In  a  concurrence  joined  by  Chief  Justice  Waite,  Justice 
Miller  agreed  that  the  order  violated  the  Fifth  Amend-
ment, id., at 639, but he strongly protested the majority’s
invocation  of  the  Fourth  Amendment.    He  explained:
“[T]here  is  no  reason  why  this  court  should  assume  that 
the  action  of  the  court  below,  in  requiring  a  party  to  pro-
duce  certain  papers  . . .  ,  authorizes  an  unreasonable
search  or  seizure  of  the  house,  papers,  or  effects  of  that 
party.  There is in fact no search and no seizure.”  Ibid.  “If 
the  mere  service  of  a  notice  to  produce  a  paper  . . .  is  a 
search,”  Justice  Miller  concluded,  “then  a  change  has
taken place in the meaning of words, which has not come 
within my reading, and which I think was unknown at the
time the Constitution was made.”  Id., at 641.
  Although  Boyd  was  replete  with  stirring  rhetoric,  its
reasoning was confused from start to finish in a way that 
ultimately  made  the  decision  unworkable.    See  3  W. 
LaFave, J. Israel, N. King, & O. Kerr, Criminal Procedure
§8.7(a)  (4th  ed.  2015).  Over  the  next  50  years,  the  Court
would  gradually  roll  back  Boyd’s  erroneous  conflation  of 
compulsory process with actual searches and seizures.

That  effort  took  its  first  significant  stride  in  Hale  v. 
Henkel,  201  U. S.  43  (1906),  where  the  Court  found  it 
“quite clear” and “conclusive” that “the search and seizure 
clause  of  the  Fourth  Amendment  was  not  intended  to 
interfere  with  the  power  of  courts  to  compel,  through  a 
subpœna  duces  tecum,  the  production,  upon  a  trial  in
court, of documentary evidence.”  Id., at 73.  Without that 
writ, the Court recognized, “it would be ‘utterly impossible