e on the constitutionality of various kinds of searches for illegal drugs.
Constitutional Background Prior to 1960
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, except upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
According to Lieberman (1987), "the Fourth Amendment stemmed from search practices that evolved for centuries in England" (p. 278). The case of Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell's State Trials 1029, (1765) held that the issuance of a specific search warrant by a duly constituted magistrate was held to be required before the authorities could ransack a man's home. During the 1760s, writs of assistance, which colonist James Otis denounced as instances of tyrannical rule, were used by the Crown to enforce unpopular English revenue laws in Massachusetts.
According to Griswold (1975), "for more than a century, this provision was a sleeping giant" (p. 2). The right of the people to be secure against warrantless searches was reaffirmed in a series of landmark decisions, the most important of which were Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), and the influential dissenting opinion of Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), which, Allen says, underlined "the premise that the amendment had been designed to protect a fundamental right to be left alone" (1995, p. 478). In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), the Court held that evidence obtained through illegal searches (in that case a warrantless search) in violation of the Fourth Amendment could not be admitted in federal court. However, in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 252 (1949), the Court declined to apply the exclusionary rule announced in Weeks to the states. Thus, as the 1960s dawned, the F...