Court Opinion

ID: 9426491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:07.677712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:01.302263
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
concurring.
It is not disputed here that the officers had probable cause to arrest Santana and to believe that she was in the house. In these circumstances, a warrant was not required to enter the house to make the arrest, at least *44where entry by force was not required. This has been the longstanding statutory or judicial rule in the majority of jurisdictions in the United States, see ALI, A Model Code of Pre-arraignment Procedure 306-314, 696-697 (1975), and has been deemed consistent with state constitutions, as well as the Fourth Amendment. It is also the Institute’s recommended rule. Id., § 120.6. I agree with the Court that the arrest here did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
My Brother Marshall, post, p. 45, and United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411, 433 (1976) (dissenting opinion), would reinterpret the Fourth Amendment to sweep aside this widely held rule and to establish a constitutional standard requiring warrants for arrests except where exigent circumstances clearly exist. The States are, of course, free to limit warrantless arrests, as is Congress; but I would not impose his suggested nationwide edict, founded as it is on a belief in the superior wisdom of the Members of this Court and their power to divine that the country’s practice to this date with respect to arrests is unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.