SUPREME COURT'S 4TH AMENDMENT

This essay traces the evolution of the jurisprudence of the American Supreme Court in its interpretations since 1960 of the Fourth Amendment. In balancing the rights of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement and other governmental agencies and the interests of public order, the Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953-1969) tipped the scales in the 60s in favor of individual rights, by ruling that the prohibitions of the Fourth Amendment applied to the states and local governments under the exclusionary rule, emphasizing the importance of searches and seizures being conducted in accordance with search warrants issued by neutral judges or magistrates and restricting the legitimate scope of warrantless searches. Subsequent Courts under Chief Justices Warren Burger (1970-1986) and William Rehnquist in the late 80s and the 90s circscribed the prohibitions of the Fourth Amendment, mainly by expanding the permissible zone of police searches incident to lawful arrests, by creating various exceptions to sanction warrantless searches and seizures and by narrowing significantly the impact of the exclusionary rule.

This partial reversal of course by the Court since the early 70s mirrored public concern over rising crime rates in the United States and reflected the more conservative composition of the Court itself. These jurisprudential changes have been evolutionary rather than revolutiona

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central issues in the case declared unconstitutional a New York statute authorizing police officers to enter a private residence without a warrant and with force, if necessary, to make a routine felony arrest. Justice John Stevens said that "the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant" (Allen, 1995, p. 713). Even the Rehnquist Court retained the common law 'knock and announce' requirement as part of the Fourth Amendment, in the absence of emergency circumstances or consent, in a unanimous decision announced by Justice Clarence Thomas in Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995). However, a series of decisions by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts have limited the scope and application of the Fourth Amendment, especially in areas beyond the home. Limitation of scope of Probable Cause determination reviews. Under a series of cases culminating in Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410 (1969), federal reviewing courts were told to employ a two-pronged test to determine whether probable cause determinations by local judges or magistrates based on informant supplied hearsay information existed, --i.e. whether the i
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