The Eroding Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights provides Americans with the right to be free from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures,’ as well as being protected from unwarranted collection of certain information. This right has been significantly qualified over the centuries since the nation’s founding, with the Supreme Court and the legislature finding significant exceptions to the warrant requirement in the 20th and 21st centuries. This article provides an overview of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in the United States, outlining how perceived ‘national threats’ have contributed to increasing surveillance not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Viewing these increasing exceptions through the lens of various ‘national threats’ from the ‘war on drugs’ in the late 20th century to the ‘war on terror’ and public fears about civil unrest in the 21st century, this article argues that there is no significant link between different modes of constitutional interpretation or political affiliation and the erosion of Fourth Amendment Privacy protections. Rather, this article argues that ‘national threats’ have placed more power into the hands of law enforcement over time, and that new technologies have increased the amount of information that can be collected without a warrant as the courts and the legislature fail to protect against warrantless surveillance.