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The Background Of The Fourth Amendment To The Constitution Of The United States, Joseph J. Stengel

University of Richmond Law Review

It is generally agreed that the antecedent history of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is concerned primarily with those events that took place in England and the AmericanColonies in the thirty years immediately preceding the adoption of the Amendment. However, it also seems clear that it was the executive abuse of search and seizure in England throughout the centuries that led to those events. The search for the reason "why" of the Fourth Amendment should then logically begin with the earliest recorded events, statutes and cases involving search and seizure in English history and be …