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Page Number: 58.0

8 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

land  288  (1768)  (“[E]very  man’s  house  is  looked  upon  by 
the law to be his castle”); 3 E. Coke, Institutes of Laws of 
England  162  (6th  ed.  1680)  (“[F]or  a  man[’]s  house  is  his 
Castle,  &  domus  sua  cuique  est  tutissimum  refugium 
[each  man’s  home  is  his  safest  refuge]”).  The  political
philosophy of John Locke, moreover, “permeated the 18th­
century political scene in America.”  Obergefell v. Hodges, 
576 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (slip op., 
at 8).  For Locke, every individual had a property right “in 
his  own  person”  and  in  anything  he  “removed  from  the
common  state  [of]  Nature”  and  “mixed  his  labour  with.”
Second Treatise of Civil Government §27 (1690).  Because 
property  is  “very  unsecure”  in  the  state  of  nature,  §123,
individuals  form  governments  to  obtain  “a  secure  enjoy­
ment  of  their  properties.”    §95.  Once  a  government  is
formed,  however,  it  cannot  be  given  “a  power  to  destroy 
that  which  every  one  designs  to  secure”;  it  cannot  legiti­
mately “endeavour to take away, and destroy the property
of  the  people,”  or  exercise  “an  absolute  power  over  [their]
lives, liberties, and estates.”  §222.

The concept of security in property recognized by Locke 
and  the  English  legal  tradition  appeared  throughout  the
materials that inspired the Fourth Amendment.  In Entick 
v.  Carrington,  19  How.  St.  Tr.  1029  (C. P.  1765)—a  her­
alded  decision  that  the  founding  generation  considered
“the  true  and  ultimate  expression  of  constitutional  law,” 
Boyd  v.  United  States,  116  U. S.  616,  626  (1886)—Lord 
Camden  explained  that  “[t]he  great  end,  for  which  men
entered  into  society,  was  to  secure  their  property.”  19 
How. St. Tr., at 1066.  The American colonists echoed this 
reasoning  in  their  “widespread  hostility”  to  the  Crown’s
writs  of  assistance6—a  practice  that  inspired  the  Revolu­

—————— 

6 Writs  of  assistance  were  “general  warrants”  that  gave  “customs
officials  blanket  authority  to  search  where  they  pleased  for  goods