The Fourth Amendment | BRI’s Homework Help Series

0:00 What prevents the police from randomly searching our homes and possessions whenever they want? The Founders believe that individuals had a natural right to own, use and dispense of their private property as they wished. As a result, they set up constitutional safeguards to secure this right. So how does the Fourth Amendment protect property rights, and what are its origins?

0:22 This is the story of the Fourth Amendment. We all have a right to be secure in our own persons, places and effects. Even if an individual has nothing to hide,

0:42 we do not like the idea of the police randomly searching to our belongings. Like many other aspects of constitutional laws in the United States, the Fourth Amendment can trace its origins back to English law. Quote: "The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress." The principle that an individual’s home and property should have special

1:02 protections against government overreach was widely accepted in England during. The lead up to the American Revolution, controversy emerged over what constituted a legitimate government search of an individual’s property. For example, the smuggling of prohibited and untaxed goods was widespread in the American colonies. British officials used writs

1:23 of assistance, or general search warrants that authorized broad searches of colonist property instead of specifying the exact object of the search. James Otis, a lawyer in Massachusetts, argued in court that these broad searches violated the traditional rights of Englishmen. While he lost his argument, John Adams would later state that Otis’s arguments planted the seeds

1:46 of the movement for American independence because it asserted an individual’s natural rights over their property and the importance of limiting government. In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, Americans wanted to ensure that the government would be limited in its ability to search and seize individuals’ property. Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourth Amendment, which reads

2:10 the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and 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.

2:31 This amendment initially only applied to the federal government. Because of this and the fact that in the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, most policing was done at the state level, the Fourth Amendment was rarely discussed or cited. However, this changed in the 20th century. One of the first major cases involving the Fourth Amendment was Weeks v.

2:52 United States in 1914. The police and a federal marshal had broken into Fremont Weeks’s home without a warrant and seized papers they used as evidence against him in court. Weeks challenged the use of the evidence as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously for him and established the exclusionary rule, which prevents illegally obtained

3:15 evidence from being used in a court of law. In one 9000 hundred and 61, the Supreme Court heard another landmark case involving the exclusionary rule. Mapp v. Ohio. Police officers in Cleveland broke into Dollree Mapp’s home without a search warrant while looking for a suspect involved in a bombing. While searching, they discovered illicit pornographic materials and charged Mapp for possessing them.

3:38 The Supreme Court’s ruling in Maps favor incorporated the exclusionary rule to apply to the states. The Supreme Court has also heard multiple landmark cases involving the Fourth Amendment and schools. In 1985, New Jersey v. T.L.O, a school official had searched the purse of a high school student for cigarettes after a teacher claimed to have seen her smoking.

3:59 Here, the court ruled that while the Fourth Amendment does grant students protections from unreasonable searches, school officials do not need a warrant to go through a student’s belongings. Later decisions have found that the Fourth Amendment does not prevent schools from implementing drug tests on students involved in athletics and other extracurricular activities. So what exactly constitutes a legal, reasonable search?

4:23 In general, the Supreme Court has ruled that law enforcement needs to have obtained a warrant from a judge before going through an individual’s processions, whether it be a house, phone, or any other type of property, with some limited exceptions. These exceptions include if the items being searched are incident to a lawful arrest or if the owner gives consent.

4:44 Today, more questions have arisen concerning the Fourth Amendment and the government’s right to use technology to search an individual’s property. The war on terror, social media, and GPS tracking have all raised important new constitutional questions about what constitutes a reasonable search or seizure. What will the next case involving the Fourth Amendment be?

5:05 This has been the story of the Fourth Amendment. For more homework help from the Bill of Rights Institute, don’t forget to like this video and subscribe.