4th Amendment Essay

U.S Constitution: the Importance of the 4th Amendment

U.S Constitution (“Introduction”) is the document that establishes the fundamental laws of the country and gives the guarantee of the primary rights for all citizens. The Constitution has been improved several times since 1787, when it was signed in Philadelphia. These improvements are called “amendments”, and there are 27 amendments in the text of this document. Each amendment has its own significant meaning for American history, but the most important of them is the 4th amendment, because it gives the rights of great importance. This paper provides an explanation of the 4th amendment and its importance for the people of America.

The 4th amendment is the part of the Bill of Rights, which

includes first 10 amendments to the U.S constitution. Its text claims the following: “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” (Sheetal, 2010), which means that this law prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and demands governmental searches to be legalized with the sanctioned warrant. The importance of this document is explained by examples of old times and reasons of contemporary world.
The roots of this law originate from the doctrine, which is “each man’s home is his castle”, as an answer to the English warrants, “the Writs of Assistance” that gave the British authorities almost limitless rights to search and seizure (Head, 2018).

These warrants allowed the British authorities to search any home for any possible reason or for no reason at all. This fact caused great disaffection among the people of colonial America, because it violated their privacy. Later, the 4th amendment was ratified on 1791 in order to protect private life and freedoms of man. The framers of this law claimed that these searches of colonial era are unacceptable and

unreasonable.
Nowadays this law has become one of the fundamental laws for the American nation.

Its supreme role in the Constitution is connected to the supremacy of personal freedom and private property. The main idea of this document now is that the unjustified intrusions of government into the property and lives of citizens cannot be tolerated. One of the vital rules, protecting privacy, claims that the police cannot search or seizure people and houses without warrant, which should be supported by the certain causes to justify it. However, searches without warrant are still possible, if the responsible person gives permission, if the search is performed during the lawful arrest or the reason to provide search is obvious and requires immediate action. These reasons refer to the persons as well as to houses or vehicles. The 4th amendment also establishes the “exclusionary right”, which means that the evidence, received by non-constitutional means cannot be used as a part of prosecutor’s case (Head, 2018). The officials could break this rule before the 1914 without being punished, when the exclusionary right was established, but nowadays the violators of this right have to pay the consequences for prohibited actions. The most sufficient role of this amendment, however, is in the restricting of the government’s procuration, so the citizens were sure that their personal rights and freedoms are

secure.
The 4th amendment indeed plays the most important role in contemporary age, but, as any rule, it has its problems. The first of the most difficult questions is to solve what is the constitutional meaning of “search”. The search of the person who is involved into suspicious action is easy to understand, but gathering of evidence from third parties, like bankers and Internet providers requires additional explicitation to provide a search without violation. The second problem is whether the search is acceptable without proper suspicion. The best example of it is the airport security. There is no reason to think that person is involved into the criminal action, but it is necessary. The same question refers to the bulk data collection and gathering biometrical data (Friedman, Kerr, n.d.). The third question is how to correlate the 4th amendment with the modern world. The text of this document is almost 200 years old, and its framers could not predict the creation of the Internet, cameras or flying drones, so it may be challenging to determine whether search is legal or not. These facts show that the law should have an update according to the changing world.
The 4th amendment plays the most important role for the American nation, because it includes the rights of great importance. These rights protect citizens’ privacy and property since the 18th century and in modern world the amendment received some additional meaning, including the exclusionary right. The development of the modern world showed some problems in the document, which should be revised according the situation. The revised facts show, that advancing technologies and new dangers add up to the world in which the 4th amendment plays the vital role.