Court Opinion

ID: 9419997
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:52:28.400026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:21.618491
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
with whom Mr. Justice Murphy and Mr. Justice Rutledge concur,
dissenting.
Because I deem the implications of the Court’s decision to have serious threats to basic liberties, I consider it important to underscore my concern over the outcome of this *156case. In Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582, the Court narrowed the protection of the Fourth Amendment1 by extending the conception of “public records” for purposes of search without warrant.2 The Court now goes far beyond prior decisions in another direction — it permits rummaging throughout a house without a search warrant on the ostensible ground of looking for the instruments of a crime for which an arrest, but only an arrest, has been authorized. If only the fate of the Davises and the Har-rises were involved, one might be brutally indifferent to the ways by which they get their deserts. But it is precisely because the appeal to the Fourth Amendment is so often made by dubious characters that its infringements call for alert and strenuous resistance. Freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, easily summon powerful support against encroachment. The prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure is normally invoked by those accused of crime, and criminals have few friends. The implications of such encroachment, however, reach far beyond the thief or the black-marketeer. I cannot give legal sanction to what was done in this case without accepting the implications of such a decision for the future, *157implications which portend serious threats against precious aspects of our traditional freedom.
If I begin with some general observations, it is not because I am unmindful of Mr. Justice Holmes’ caution that “General propositions do not decide concrete cases.” Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 76. Whether they do or not often depends on the strength of the conviction with which such “general propositions” are held. A principle may be accepted “in principle,” but the impact of an immediate situation may lead to deviation from the principle. Or, while accepted “in principle,” a competing principle may seem more important. Both these considerations have doubtless influenced the application of the search and seizure provisions of the Bill of Rights. Thus, one’s views regarding circumstances like those here presented ultimately depend upon one’s understanding of the history and the function of the Fourth Amendment. A decision may turn on whether one gives that Amendment a place second to none in the Bill of Rights, or considers it on the whole a kind of nuisance, a serious impediment in the war against crime.
The provenance of the Fourth Amendment bears on its scope. It will be recalled that James Otis made his epochal argument against general warrants in 1761.3 *158Otis’ defense of privacy was enshrined in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 in the following terms:
“XIV. Every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches, and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his possessions. All warrants, therefore, are contrary to this right, if the cause or foundation of them be not previously supported by oath or affirmation; and if the order in the warrant to a civil officer, to make search in suspected places, or to arrest one or more suspected persons, or to seize their property, be not accompanied with a special designation of the persons or objects of search, arrest, or seizure: and no warrant ought to be issued but in cases, and with the formalities, prescribed by the laws.”
In the meantime, Virginia, in her first Constitution (1776), incorporated a provision on the subject narrower in scope:
“X. That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.”
When Madison came to deal with safeguards against ■ searches and seizures in the United States Constitution, he did not draw on the Virginia model but based his proposal on the Massachusetts form. This is clear proof that Congress meant to give wide, and not limited, scope to this protection against police intrusion.
*159Historically we are dealing with a provision of the Constitution which sought to guard against an abuse that more than any one single factor gave rise to American independence. John Adams surely is a competent witness on the causes of the American Revolution. And he it was who said of Otis’ argument against search by the police, not unlike the one before us, “American independence was then and there born.” 10 Adams, Works 247. That which lay behind immunity from police intrusion without a search warrant was expressed by Mr. Justice Brandéis when he said that the makers of our Constitution
“conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
To be sure, that was said by him in a dissenting opinion in which he, with Mr. Justice Holmes, Mr. Justice Butler and Mr. Justice Stone applied the prohibition of the Fourth Amendment to wiretapping without statutory authority. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 478. But with only an occasional deviation, a series of decisions of this Court has construed the Fourth Amendment “liberally to safeguard the right of privacy.” United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, 464. (See an analysis of the cases in the Appendix to this opinion.) Thus, the federal rule established in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, as against the rule prevailing in many States, renders evidence obtained through an improper search inadmissible no matter how relevant. See People v. Defore, 242 N. Y. 13, 150 N. E. 585, and Chafee, The Progress of the Law 1919-1922, 35 Harv. L. Rev. 673, 694 et seg. And *160long before the Weeks case, Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, gave legal effect to the broad historic policy-underlying the Fourth Amendment.4 The Boyd opinion has been the guide to the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment to which the Court has most frequently recurred.
It is significant that the constitution of every State contains a clause like that of the Fourth Amendment and often in its precise wording. Nor are these constitutional provisions historic survivals. New York was alone in not having a safeguard against unreasonable search and seizure in its constitution. In that State, the privilege of privacy was safeguarded by a statute. It tells volumes that in 1938, New York, not content with statutory protection, put the safeguard into its constitution.5 If *161one thing on this subject can be said with confidence it is that the protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment against search and seizure by the police, except under the closest judicial safeguards, is not an outworn bit of Eighteenth Century romantic rationalism but an indispensable need for a democratic society.
The Fourth Amendment, we have seen, derives from the similar provision in the first Massachusetts Constitution. We may therefore look to the construction which the early Massachusetts Court placed upon the progenitor of the Fourth Amendment:
“With the fresh recollection of those stirring discussions [respecting writs of assistance], and of the revolution which followed them, the article in the Bill of Rights, respecting searches and seizures, was framed and adopted. This article does not prohibit all searches and seizures of a man’s person, his papers, and possessions; but such only as are ‘unreasonable,’ and the foundation of which is ‘not previously supported by oath or affirmation.’ The legislature were not deprived of the power to authorize search warrants for probable causes, supported by oath or affirmation, and for the punishment or suppression of any violation of law.” Commonwealth v. Dana, 2 Met. (Mass.) 329, 336.
The plain import of this is that searches are “unreasonable” unless authorized by a warrant, and a warrant *162hedged about by adequate safeguards. “Unreasonable” is not to be determined with reference to a particular search and seizure considered in isolation. The “reason” by which search and seizure is to be tested is the “reason” that was written out of historic experience into the Fourth Amendment. This means that, with minor and severely confined exceptions, inferentially a part of the Amendment, every search and seizure is unreasonable when made without a magistrate’s authority expressed through a validly issued warrant.
It is noteworthy that Congress has consistently and carefully respected the privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. Because they realized that the dangers of police abuse were persisting dangers, the Fathers put the Fourth Amendment into the Constitution. Because these dangers are inherent in the temptations and the tendencies of the police, Congress has always been chary in allowing the use of search warrants. When it has authorized them it has circumscribed their use with particularity. In scores upon score of Acts, Congress authorized search by warrant only for particular situations and in extremely restricted ways. Despite repeated importunities by Attorneys General of the United States, Congress long refused to make search by warrant generally available as a resource in aid of criminal prosecution. It did not do so until the first World War, and even then it did not do so except under conditions carefully circumscribed.
The whole history of legislation dealing with search and seizure shows how warily Congress has walked precisely because of the Fourth Amendment. A search of the entire premises for instruments of crime merely as an incident to a warrant of arrest has never been authorized by Congress. Nor has Congress ever authorized such search without a warrant even for stolen or contraband goods. On the contrary, it is precisely for the search of such goods *163that specific legislative authorization was given by Congress. Warrants even for such search required great particularity and could, be issued only on adequate grounds. (For a table of Congressional legislation, with indication as to its scope, see the Appendix to the dissenting opinion in the Davis case, 328 U. S. at 616.)
This is the historic background against which the undisputed facts of this case must be projected. For me the background is respect for that provision of the Bill of Rights which is central to enjoyment of the other guarantees of the Bill of Rights. How can there be freedom of thought or freedom of speech or freedom of religion, if the police can, without warrant, search your house and mine from garret to cellar merely because they are executing a warrant of arrest? How can men feel free if all their papers may be searched, as an incident to the arrest of someone in the house, on the chance that something may turn up, or rather, be turned up? Yesterday the justifying document was an illicit ration book, tomorrow it may be some suspect piece of literature.
The Court’s reasoning, as I understand it, may be briefly stated. The entry into Harris’ apartment was lawful because the agents had a warrant of arrest. The ensuing search was lawful because, as an incident of a lawful arrest, the police may search the premises on which the arrest took place since everything in the apartment was in the “possession” of the accused and subject to his control. It was lawful, therefore, for the agents to rummage the apartment in search for “instruments of the crime.” Since the search was lawful, anything illicit discovered in the course of the search was lawfully seized. In any event, the seizure was lawful because the documents found were property of the United States and their possession was a continuing crime against the United States.
*164Much is made of the fact that the entry into the house was lawful. But we are not confined to issues of trespass. The protection of the Fourth Amendment extends to improper searches and seizures, quite apart from the legality of an entry. The Amendment asserts the “right of the people to be secure” not only “in their persons, houses,” but also in their “papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” It is also assumed that because the search was allegedly for instruments of the crime for which Harris was arrested it was ipso facto justified as an incident of the arrest. It would hardly be suggested that such a search could be made without warrant if Harris had been arrested on the street. How, then, is rummaging a man’s closets and drawers more incidental to the arrest because the police chose to arrest him at home? For some purposes, to be sure, a man’s house and its contents are deemed to be in his “possession” or “control” even when he is miles away. Because this is a mode of legal reasoning relevant to disputes over property, the usual phrase for such non-physical control is “constructive possession.” But this mode of thought and these concepts are irrelevant to the application of the Fourth Amendment and hostile to respect for the liberties which it protects. Due regard for the policy of the Fourth Amendment precludes indulgence in the fiction that the recesses of a man’s house are like the pockets of the clothes he wears at the time of his arrest.
To find authority for ransacking a home merely from authority for the arrest of a person is to give a novel and ominous rendering to a momentous chapter in the history of Anglo-American freedom. An Englishman’s home, though a hovel, is his castle, precisely because the law secures freedom from fear of intrusion by the police except under carefully safeguarded authorization by a magistrate. *165To derive from the common law right to search the person as an incident of his arrest the right of indiscriminate search of all his belongings, is to disregard the fact that the Constitution protects both unauthorized arrest and unauthorized search. Authority to arrest does not dispense with the requirement of authority to search.
But even if the search was reasonable, it does not follow that the seizure was lawful. If the agents had obtained a warrant to look for the cancelled checks, they would not be entitled to seize other items discovered in the process. Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, 196.6 Harris would have been able to reclaim them by a motion to suppress evidence. Such is the policy of the Fourth Amendment, recognized by Congress and reformulated in the New Rules of Criminal Procedure adopted only last year. See Rule 41 (e) superseding the Act of June 15, 1917, 40 Stat. 228, 229. The Court’s decision achieves the novel and startling result of making the scope of search without warrant broader than an authorized search.
These principles are well established. While a few of the lower courts have uncritically and unwarrantedly extended the very limited search without warrant of a person upon his lawful arrest, such extension is hostile to the policy of the Amendment and is not warranted by the precedents of this Court.
“It is important to keep clear the distinction between prohibited searches on the one hand and improper seizures on the other. See Mr. Justice Miller, in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 638, 641. Thus, it is unconstitutional to seize a person’s private papers, though the search *166in which they were recovered was perfectly proper. E. g., Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298. It is unconstitutional to make an improper search even for articles that are appropriately subject to seizure, e. g., Amos v. United States, 255 U. S. 313; Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28; Taylor v. United States, 286 U. S. 1. And a search may be improper because of the object it seeks to uncover, e. g., Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 393-94, or because its scope extends beyond the constitutional bounds, e. g., Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20.
“The course of decisions here has observed these important distinctions. The Court has not been indulgent towards inroads upon the Amendment. Only rarely have its dicta appeared to give undue scope to the right of search on arrest, and Marron v. United States, supra [275 U. S. 192], is the only decision in which the dicta were reflected in the result. That case has been a source of confusion to the lower courts. Thus, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit felt that the Marrón case required it to give a more restricted view to the prohibitions of the Fourth Amendment than that court had expounded in . United States v. Kirschenblatt, 16 F. 2d 202, see Go-Bart Co. v. United States, sub nom., United States v. Gowen, 40 F. 2d 593, only to find itself reversed here, Go-Bart Co. v. United States, supra [282 U. S. 344], partly on the authority of the Kirschenblatt decision which, after the Marrón case, it thought it must disown. The uncritical application of the right of search on arrest in the Marrón case has surely been displaced by Go-Bart Co. v. United States, supra, and even more drastically by United States v. Lefkowitz, supra [285 U. S. 452], unless one is to infer that an earlier case qualifies later decisions although these later decisions have explicitly confined the earlier case.” Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. at 612-13 (dissenting opinion).
*167It is urged that even if the search was not justified, once it was made and the illicit documents discovered, they could be seized because their possession was a “continuing offense” committed “in the very presence of the agents.” Apparently, then, a search undertaken illegally may retrospectively, by a legal figment, gain legality from what happened four hours later. This is to defeat the prohibition against lawless search and seizure by the application of an inverted notion of trespass ab initio. Here an unconstitutional trespass ab initio retrospectively acquires legality. Thus, the decision finds satisfaction of the constitutional requirement by circular reasoning. Search requires authority; authority to search is gained by what may be found during search without authority. By this reasoning every illegal search and seizure may be validated if the police find evidence of crime. The result can hardly be to discourage police violation of the constitutional protection.
If the search is illegal when begun, as it clearly was in this case if past decisions mean anything, it cannot retrospectively gain legality. If the search was illegal, the resulting seizure in the course of the search is illegal. It is no answer to say that possession of a document may itself be a crime. There is no suggestion here that the search was based on even a suspicion that Harris was in possession of illicit documents. The search was justified and is justified only in connection with the offense for which there was a warrant of arrest. But unless we are going to throw to the winds the latest unanimous decisions of this Court on the allowable range of search without warrant incidental to lawful arrest, Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344, and United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, this was an unlawful search which rendered unavailable as evidence everything seized in the course of it. That the agents might have obtained a warrant to make the search only emphasizes the illegal*168ity of their conduct. In the words of Mr. Justice Holmes, speaking for the Court, the precious constitutional rights “against unlawful search and seizure are to be protected even if the same result might have been achieved in a lawful way.” Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385, 392. Nor does the fact that the goods seized are contraband make valid an otherwise unlawful search and seizure. Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20. Indeed it was for contraband goods that search warrants, carefully hedged about, were first authorized by Congress.
The only exceptions to the safeguard of a warrant issued by a magistrate are those which the common law recognized as inherent limitations of the policy which found expression in the Fourth Amendment — where circumstances preclude the obtaining of a warrant (as in the case of movable vehicles), and where the warrant for the arrest of a person carries with it authority to seize all that is on the person, or is in such open and immediate physical relation to him as to be, in a fair sense, a projection of his person. That is the teaching of both the Go-Bart and the Lefkowitz cases, which effectually retract whatever may have been the loose consideration of the problem in Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192. Thus, the Go-Bart case emphasized that the things seized in the Marrón case were “visible and accessible and in the offender’s immediate custody.” 282 U. S. 344, 358. By “immediate custody” was not meant that figurative possession which for some legal purposes puts one in “possession” of everything in a house. The sentence following that just quoted excludes precisely the kind of thing that was done here. “There was no threat of force or general search or rummaging of the place.” Ibid.
In our case, five agents came to arrest Harris on a charge of violating the Postal Laws and the National Stolen Property Act. Though the arrest was consummated in *169the living room, the agents were told to make “a thorough search” of the entire apartment. In the bedroom they lifted the carpets, stripped the bed-linen, turned over the mattress. They combed the contents of the linen closet and even looked into Harris’ shoes. The Selective Service cards, the items whose seizure is here in controversy, were discovered only after agents tore open a sealed envelope labeled “personal papers” which they had found under some clothes in a drawer of a small bureau in the bedroom. If there was no “rummaging of the place” in this case it would be difficult to imagine what “rummaging of the place” means.
Again, in the Lefkowitz case, the Marrón case was carefully defined and limited:
“There, prohibition officers lawfully on the premises searching for liquor described in a search warrant, arrested the bartender for crime openly being committed in their presence. He was maintaining a nuisance in violation of the Act. The offense involved the element of continuity, the purchase of liquor from time to time, its sale as a regular thing for consumption upon the premises and other transactions including the keeping of accounts. The ledger and bills being in plain view were picked up by the officers as an incident of the arrest. No search for them was made.” 285 U. S. at 465.
Surely no .comparable situation is now here. There was no search warrant, no crime was “openly being committed” in the presence of the officers, the seized documents were not “in plain view” or “picked up by the officers as an incident of the arrest.” Here a “thorough search” was made, and made without warrant.
To say that the Go-Bart and the Lefkowitz cases — both of them unanimous decisions of the Court — are authority for the conduct of the arresting agents in this case is to find that situations decisively different are the same.
*170It greatly underrates the quality of the American people and of the civilized standards to which they can be summoned to suggest that we must conduct our criminal justice on a lower level than does England, and that our police must be given a head which British courts deny theirs. A striking and characteristic example of the solicitous care of English courts concerning the “liberty of the subject” may be found in the recent judgments in Christie v. Leachinsky. In that case the House of Lords unanimously ruled that if a policeman arrests without warrant, although entertaining a reasonable suspicion of felony which would justify arrest, but does not inform the person of the nature of the charge, the police are liable for false imprisonment for such arrest. These judgments bear mightily upon the central problem of this case, namely, the appropriate balancing, in the words of Lord Simonds, of “the liberty of the subject and the convenience of the police.” Christie v. Leachinsky, [1947] 1 All E. R. 567, 576.7
*171The English attitude was clearly evinced also in the famous Savidge case. “Both the original incident and its sequel illustrate the sensitiveness of English opinion to even a suggestion of oppression by the police.” IV Reports of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (“Lawlessness in Law Enforcement”) P. 261. For “the high standards of conduct exacted by Englishmen of the police” (id. at 259) see the debates in the House of Commons, 217 Hans. Deb. (Commons) cols. 1303 et seq. (May 17, 1928), and 220 id. cols. 35 and 805 et seq. (July 20,1928) and the Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry on the Savidge case, Cmd. 3147, 1928. There are those who say that we cannot have such high standards of criminal justice because the general standards of English life ensure greater obedience to law and better law enforcement. I reject this notion, and not the least because I think it is more accurate to say that the administration of criminal justice is more effective in England because law enforcement is there pursued on a more civilized level.
Of course, this may mean that it might be more difficult to obtain evidence of an offense unexpectedly uncovered in a lawless search. It may even mean that some offenses may go unwhipped of the law. If so, that is part of the cost for the greater gains of the Fourth Amendment. The whole point about the Fourth Amendment is that “Its protection extends to offenders as well as to the law abiding,” because of its important bearing in maintaining a free society and avoiding the dangers of a police state. United States v. Lefkowitz, supra at 464. But the impediments of the Fourth Amendment to effective law enforcement are grossly exaggerated. Disregard of procedures imposed upon the police by the Constitution and the laws is too often justified on the score of necessity. This case is a good illustration how lame an excuse it is that con*172duct such as is now before us is required by the exigencies of law enforcement. Here there was ample opportunity to secure the authority of law to make the search and later authority from a magistrate to seize the articles uncovered in the course of the search. Taylor v. United States, 286 U. S. 1, 6; United States v. Kaplan, 89 E. 2d 869, 871. The hindrances that are conjured up are counsels of despair which disregard the experience of effective law enforcement in jurisdictions where the police are held to strict accountability and are forbidden conduct like that here disclosed.
Stooping to questionable methods neither enhances that respect for law which is the most potent element in law enforcement, nor, in the long run, do such methods promote successful prosecution. In this country police testimony is often rejected by juries precisely because of a widely entertained belief that illegal methods are used to secure testimony. Thus, dubious police methods defeat the very ends of justice by which such methods are justified. No such cloud rests on police testimony in England. Respect for law by law officers promotes respect generally, just as lawlessness by law officers sets a contagious and competitive example to others. See IV Reports of the National Commission on Law Enforcement and Observance (“Lawlessness in Law Enforcement”) passim, especially pp. 190-92. Moreover, by compelling police officers to abstain from improper methods for securing evidence, pressure is exerted upon them to bring the resources of intelligence and imagination into play in the detection and prosecution of crime.
No doubt the Fourth Amendment limits the freedom of the police in bringing criminals to justice. But to allow them the freedom which the Fourth Amendment was designed to curb was deemed too costly by the Founders. As Mr. Justice Holmes said in the Olm-stead case, “we must consider the two objects of desire, *173both of which we cannot have, and make up our minds which to choose.” 277 U. S. at 470. Of course arresting officers generally feel irked by what to them are technical legal restrictions. But they must not be allowed to be unmindful of the fact that such restrictions are essential safeguards of a free people. To sanction conduct such as this case reveals is to encourage police intrusions upon privacy, without legal warrant, in situations that go even beyond the facts of the present case. If it be said that an attempt to extend the present case may be curbed in subsequent litigation, it is important to remember that police conduct is not often subjected to judicial scrutiny. Day by day mischief may be done and precedents built up in practice long before the judiciary has an opportunity to intervene. It is for this reason — the dangerous tendency of allowing encroachments on the rights of privacy — that this Court in the Boyd case gave to the Fourth Amendment its wide protective scope.
It is vital, no doubt, that criminals should be detected, and that all relevant evidence should be secured and used. On the other hand, it cannot be said too often that what is involved far transcends the fate of some sordid offender. Nothing less is involved than that which makes for an atmosphere of freedom as against a feeling of fear and repression for society as a whole. The dangers are not fanciful. We too readily forget them. Recollection may be refreshed as to the happenings after the first World War by the “Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice,” which aroused the public concern of Chief Justice Hughes8 (then at the bar), and by the little book entitled “The Deportations De*174lirium of Nineteen-Twenty” by Louis F. Post, who spoke with the authoritative knowledge of an Assistant Secretary of Labor.
More than twenty years ago, before democracy was subjected to its recent stress and strain, Judge Learned Hand, in a decision approved by this Court in the Lefkowitz case, expressed views that seem to me decisive of this case:
“After arresting a man in his house, to rummage at will among his papers in search of whatever will convict him, appears to us to be indistinguishable from what might be done under a general warrant; indeed, the warrant would give more protection, for presumably it must be issued by a magistrate. True, by hypothesis the power would not exist, if the supposed offender were not found on the premises; but it is small consolation to know that one’s papers are safe only so long as one is not at home. Such constitutional limitations arise, from grievances, real or fancied, which their makers have suffered, and should go pari passu with the supposed evil. They withstand the winds of logic by the depth and toughness of their roots in the past. Nor should we forget that what seems fair enough against a squalid huckster of bad liquor may take on a very different face, if used by a government determined to suppress political opposition under the guise of sedition.” United States v. Kirschenblatt, 16 F. 2d 202, 203.
[For dissenting opinions of MuRphy and Jackson, JJ., see post, pp. 183, 195.]
*175APPENDIX

*177

*179

*181

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, a.nd effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

 While this case presents a situation not involved in the Davis case, or in Zap v. United States, 328 U. S. 624, so that the Court’s conclusion cannot rest on those cases, it is appropriate to note that neither of those cases carries the authority of a majority of the Court. Aside from the fact that a constitutional adjudication of recent vintage and by a divided Court may always be reconsidered, I am loath to believe that these decisions by less than a majority of the Court are the last word on issues of such far-reaching importance to constitutional liberties.

 For reports of Otis’ famous argument, see 2 Adams, Works pp. 523-25; Tudor, Life of James Otis, c. VI; Quincy’s Massachusetts Reports pp. 471 et seq. (see also pp. 51-55); American History Leaflets, No. 33. And see the tribute of John Adams to Otis, Samuel Adams, and Hancock in 8 Old South Leaflets p..57 (No. 179).
“The seizure of the papers of Algernon Sidney, which were made use of as the means of convicting him of treason, and of those of Wilkes about the time that the controversy between Great Britain and the American Colonies was assuming threatening proportions, was probably the immediate occasion for this constitutional provision. See Leach v. Money, Burr. 1742; S. C., 1 W. Bl. 555, 19 State Trials, 1001, and Broom, Const. Law, 525; Entick v. Carrington, 2 Wils. 275; *158S. C., 19 State Trials, 1030, and Broom, Const. Law, 558; May, Const. Hist., eh. 10; Trial of Algernon Sidney, 9 State Trials, 817.” Cooley, Principles of Constitutional Law (1st ed.) 212, n. 2.

 Compare the answers to certified questions given by this Court in Gouled v. United States, 255 U. S. 298, with the forecast made by a student of the subject of known partiality in favor of civil liberties. Fraenkel, Concerning Searches and Seizures, 34 Harv. L. Rev. 361, 385-87. As pointed out by- Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr., in each instance where the Gouled case differs from Mr. Fraenkel's forecast, “the Court gave increased force to the constitutional guarantee.” Chafee, The Progress of the Law 1919-1922, 35 Harv. L. Rev. 673, 699.

 It is not without interest to note the first appearance of provisions dealing with search and seizure in State constitutions: Alabama: I, 9 (1819); Arizona: II, 8 (1911); Arkansas: II, 9 (1836) ; California: I, 19 (1849); Colorado: II, 7 (1876); Connecticut: I, 8 (1818); Delaware: I, 6 (1792); Florida: I, 7 (1838); Georgia: I, 18 (1865); Idaho: I, 17 (1889); Illinois: VIII, 7 (1818); Indiana: I, 8 (1816); Iowa: I, 8 (1846); Kansas: I, 14 (1855); Kentucky: XII (1792); Louisiana: Tit. VII, Art. 108 (1864); Maine: I, 5 (1819); Maryland: Deck of Rights, XXIII (1776); Massachusetts: Part the First, Art. XIV (1780); Michigan: I, 8 (1835); Minnesota: I, 10 (1857); Mississippi: 1,9 (1817); Missouri: XIII, 13 (1820); Montana: III, 7 (1889); Nebraska: I, 7 (1875); Nevada: I, 18 (1864); New Hampshire: I, XIX (1784); New Jersey: I, 6 (1844); New Mexico: II, 10 (1910); North Carolina: Deck of Rights, XI (1776); *161North. Dakota: I, 18 (1889); Ohio: VIII, 5 (1802); Oklahoma: II, 30 (1907); Oregon: I, 9 (1857); Pennsylvania: Decl. of Rights, X (1776); Rhode Island: I, 6 (1842); South Carolina: I, 22 (1868); South Dakota: VI, 11 (1889); Tennessee: XI, 7 (1796); Texas: Decl. of Rights, 5 (1836), I, 7 (1845); Utah: I, 14 (1895); Vermont: c. I, XI (1777); Virginia: Bill of Rights, 10 (1776); Washington: I, 7 (1889); West Virginia: II, 3 (1861-63); Wisconsin: I, 11 (1848); Wyoming: I, 4 (1889).

 “The requirement that warrants shall particularly describe the things to be seized makes general searches under them impossible and prevents the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another. As to what is to be taken, nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant.”

 The extent to which such subordination of the police to law finds support in informed English opinion is reflected by the comments of the Solicitors’ Journal. After noting that, in the view of Lord Simon, “Any other general rule would be contrary to our conception of individual liberty, though it might be tolerated in the time of the Lettres de Cachet in the eighteenth century in France or under the Gestapo,” the Journal observes: “The importance of the reaffirmation of this principle cannot be exaggerated. The powers of private persons to arrest where a felony has been committed and there is reasonable ground for thinking that the person detained has committed it are important now that crimes of violence are more numerous, and the statutory powers of arrest without warrant under, e. g., the Malicious Damage Act, 1861, the Larceny Act, 1916, the Curtis Act of 1876, and many other Acts are more used than is generally appreciated. Of no less importance in such times as these is the assertion of our individual liberties to counteract any tendency which may appear for police powers to be exceeded.” 91 Solicitors’ Journal 184^85 (April 12,1947).

 Address, Harvard Law School Association, June 21, 1920, Some Observations on Legal Education and Democratic Progress, p. 23: “We cannot afford to ignore the indications that, perhaps to an extent unparalleled in our history, the essentials of liberty are being disregarded. Very recently information has been laid by responsible citi*174zens at the bar of public opinion of violations of personal rights which savor of the worst practices of tyranny.”
For a contemporaneous judicial account of searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment in connection with the Communist raids of January 2, 1920, see Judge George W. Anderson's opinion in Colyer v. Skeffington, 265 F. 17.