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Unreasonable Searches And Seizures Of Papers, Eric Schnapper

Articles

This article argues that the Supreme Court's original view of the history and meaning of the fourth amendment was correct: seizures of papers were condemned in eighteenth-century England without respect to the validity of any underlying warrant, and the search and seizure clause thus embodies requirements independent of the warrant clause.

Part I discusses the eighteenth-century English decisions, including Entick, and concludes that the case law of that era had two separate branches. One branch forbade general warrants and led to the adoption of the warrant clause; the other, exemplified by Entick, prohibited the seizure of certain papers …