Civil Liberties impacts
Upholding the Bill of Rights and the 4th Amendment specifically has the most direct effect on citizens' lives
Banks, William, and Bowman, M.E., "EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY FOR NATIONAL SECURITY SURVEILLANCE," 50 American University Law Review 1, October, 2000
It may have been only an after thought, but the Bill of Rights more directly affects the personal lives of Americans than any other aspect of our law. n1 We cherish our right to speak, assemble and worship as we please. n2 We also cherish our privacy, one aspect of which stems from the Fourth Amendment, n3 our constitutional remedy for a perceived evil of British law - the general warrant.
The British general warrant was a search tool employed without limitation on location, and without any necessity to precisely describe the object or person sought. n4 British authorities were simply given license to "break into any shop or place suspected" wherever they [*3] chose. n5 With that kind of unfettered discretion, the general warrant could be, and often was, used to intimidate. n6 General warrants executed during the reign of Charles I sought to intimidate dissidents, authors, and printers of seditious material by ransacking homes and seizing personal papers. n7 In 1765, the courts declared general warrants illegal, and Parliament followed a year later. n8
In the colonies, complaints that royal officials were violating the privacy of colonists through the use of writs of assistance, equivalent to general warrants, grew. n9 Because English law did not, as yet, recognize a right of personal privacy, the crown's abuses in the colonies were not remediable at law. n10 It was thus no surprise that the new American Constitution and the government it created would respect a series of individual freedoms.
James Madison authored what would become the Fourth Amendment and proposed it to the Congress on June 8, 1789. n11 For the new nation, warrants would require specificity to physically invade the privacy of its citizenry. n12 Today, that same specificity is required to authorize electronic and physical invasions of privacy.
Banks, William, and Bowman, M.E., "EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY FOR NATIONAL SECURITY SURVEILLANCE," 50 American University Law Review 1, October, 2000
It may have been only an after thought, but the Bill of Rights more directly affects the personal lives of Americans than any other aspect of our law. n1 We cherish our right to speak, assemble and worship as we please. n2 We also cherish our privacy, one aspect of which stems from the Fourth Amendment, n3 our constitutional remedy for a perceived evil of British law - the general warrant.
The British general warrant was a search tool employed without limitation on location, and without any necessity to precisely describe the object or person sought. n4 British authorities were simply given license to "break into any shop or place suspected" wherever they [*3] chose. n5 With that kind of unfettered discretion, the general warrant could be, and often was, used to intimidate. n6 General warrants executed during the reign of Charles I sought to intimidate dissidents, authors, and printers of seditious material by ransacking homes and seizing personal papers. n7 In 1765, the courts declared general warrants illegal, and Parliament followed a year later. n8
In the colonies, complaints that royal officials were violating the privacy of colonists through the use of writs of assistance, equivalent to general warrants, grew. n9 Because English law did not, as yet, recognize a right of personal privacy, the crown's abuses in the colonies were not remediable at law. n10 It was thus no surprise that the new American Constitution and the government it created would respect a series of individual freedoms.
James Madison authored what would become the Fourth Amendment and proposed it to the Congress on June 8, 1789. n11 For the new nation, warrants would require specificity to physically invade the privacy of its citizenry. n12 Today, that same specificity is required to authorize electronic and physical invasions of privacy.
posted by Dan at 1:33 PM
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