Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 83

12 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

(2010); Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898, 905 (1997).
Yet none has been brought to our attention. 

C 
Of  course,  our  jurisprudence  has  not  stood  still  since
1791.  We now evaluate subpoenas duces tecum and other 
forms  of  compulsory  document  production  under  the
Fourth Amendment, although we employ a reasonableness
standard that is less demanding than the requirements for 
a warrant.  But the road to that doctrinal destination was 
anything  but  smooth,  and  our  initial  missteps—and  the 
subsequent  struggle  to  extricate  ourselves  from  their 
consequences—should  provide  an  object  lesson  for  today’s
majority about the dangers of holding compulsory process
to the same standard as actual searches and seizures. 

For almost a century after the Fourth Amendment was
enacted, this Court said and did nothing to indicate that it
might  regulate  the  compulsory  production  of  documents. 
But  that  changed  temporarily  when  the  Court  decided 
Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616 (1886), the first—and,
until  today,  the  only—case  in  which  this  Court  has  ever
held the compulsory production of documents to the same 
standard as actual searches and seizures. 

The  Boyd  Court  held  that  a  court  order  compelling  a 
company  to  produce  potentially  incriminating  business
records  violated  both  the  Fourth  and  the  Fifth  Amend-
ments.  The Court acknowledged that “certain aggravating 
incidents  of  actual  search  and  seizure,  such  as  forcible 
entry  into  a  man’s  house  and  searching  amongst  his  pa-
pers,  are  wanting”  when  the  Government  relies  on  com-
pulsory process.  Id., at 622.  But it nevertheless asserted 
that  the  Fourth  Amendment  ought  to  “be  liberally  con-
strued,” id., at 635, and further reasoned that compulsory 
process  “effects  the  sole  object  and  purpose  of  search  and
seizure”  by  “forcing  from  a  party  evidence  against  him-
self,”  id.,  at  622.    “In  this  regard,”  the  Court  concluded,