Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 57

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

7 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

Founders,2  early  congressional  documents  and  debates,3 
collections  of  early  American  English  texts,4  or  early
American newspapers.5 

B 
The Katz test strays even further from the text by focus­
ing  on  the  concept  of  “privacy.”    The  word  “privacy”  does
not appear in the Fourth Amendment (or anywhere else in 
the  Constitution  for  that  matter).    Instead,  the  Fourth 
Amendment  references  “[t]he  right  of  the  people  to  be 
secure.”  It then qualifies that right by limiting it to “per­
sons” and three specific types of property: “houses, papers,
and effects.”  By connecting the right to be secure to these 
four  specific  objects,  “[t]he  text  of  the  Fourth Amendment
reflects  its  close  connection  to  property.”  Jones,  supra,  at 
405.  “[P]rivacy,” by contrast, “was not part of the political 
vocabulary of the [founding].  Instead, liberty and privacy
rights  were  understood  largely  in  terms  of  property 
rights.”  Cloud, Property Is Privacy: Locke and Brandeis in
the  Twenty-First  Century,  55  Am.  Crim.  L. Rev.  37,  42
(2018).

Those  who  ratified  the  Fourth  Amendment  were  quite
familiar  with  the  notion  of  security  in  property.    Security
in property was a prominent concept in English law.  See, 
e.g., 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of Eng- 

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2 National  Archives,  Library  of  Congress,  Founders  Online,  https://
founders.archives.gov  (all  Internet  materials  as  last  visited  June 
18, 2018). 

3 A  Century  of  Lawmaking  For  A  New  Nation,  U. S.  Congressional 
Documents  and  Debates,  1774–1875  (May  1,  2003),  https://memory.loc
.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html. 

4 Corpus of Historical American English, https://corpus.byu.edu/coha;
Google  Books  (American),  https://googlebooks.byu.edu/x.asp;  Corpus  of 
Founding Era American English, https://lawncl.byu.edu/cofea. 

5 Readex,  America’s  Historical  Newspapers 

(2018),  https://

www.readex.com/content/americas-historical-newspapers.