Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 104.0

6 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

standing  of  the  Fourth  Amendment,  as  JUSTICE  THOMAS 
thoughtfully  explains  today.    Ante,  at  5–17  (dissenting
opinion).  The Amendment’s protections do not depend on
the breach of some abstract “expectation of privacy” whose 
contours  are  left  to  the  judicial  imagination.    Much  more 
concretely,  it  protects  your  “person,”  and  your  “houses, 
papers, and effects.”  Nor does your right to bring a Fourth
Amendment claim depend on whether a judge happens to
agree  that  your  subjective  expectation  to  privacy  is  a 
“reasonable” one.  Under its plain terms, the Amendment
grants  you  the  right  to  invoke  its  guarantees  whenever 
one of your protected things (your person, your house, your 
papers, or your effects) is unreasonably searched or seized. 
Period. 

History too holds problems for Katz.  Little like it can be 
found  in  the  law  that  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  Fourth 
Amendment or in this Court’s jurisprudence until the late 
1960s.  The Fourth Amendment came about in response to 
a  trio  of  18th  century  cases  “well  known  to  the  men  who 
wrote  and  ratified  the  Bill  of  Rights,  [and]  famous
throughout the colonial population.”  Stuntz, The Substan-
tive Origins of Criminal Procedure, 105 Yale L. J. 393, 397 
(1995).  The first two were English cases invalidating the
Crown’s  use  of  general  warrants  to  enter  homes  and 
search papers.  Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr. 1029 
(K. B.  1765);  Wilkes  v.  Wood,  19  How.  St.  Tr.  1153  (K. B. 
1763);  see  W.  Cuddihy,  The  Fourth  Amendment:  Origins 
and  Original  Meaning  439–487  (2009);  Boyd  v.  United 
States,  116  U. S.  616,  625–630  (1886).    The  third  was 
American:  the  Boston  Writs  of  Assistance  Case,  which 
sparked  colonial  outrage  at  the  use  of  writs  permitting
government agents to enter houses and business, breaking 
open doors and chests along the way, to conduct searches
and  seizures—and  to  force  third  parties  to  help  them.
Stuntz,  supra,  at  404–409;  M.  Smith,  The  Writs  of  Assis-
tance  Case  (1978).  No  doubt  the  colonial  outrage  engen-