Hugo Black

“ The authority to search which flows from the right to arrest was next discussed by this Court in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 158, 45 S.Ct. 287:
'When a man is legally arrested for an offense, whatever is found upon his person or in his control which it is unlawful for him to have and which may be used to prove the offense may be seized and held as evidence in the prosecution.' While broader than the Weeks statement, this is still far from claiming the right to search a place merely because of an arrest there. ”

“ If the exception of search without a warrant incidental to a legal arrest is extended beyond the person and his physical extension, search throughout the house necessarily follows. I am aware that most differences in the law depend on differences of degree. ”

“ Experience proves that it is a counsel of despair to assume that the police cannot be kept within the bounds of the principles which the Fourth and Fifth Amendments embody except at the cost of impotence in preventing crime and dealing sternly with its commission.
12. To say that the search must be reasonable is to require some criterion of reason. It is no guide at all either for a jury or for district judges or the police to say that an 'unreasonable search' is forbidden-that the search must be reasonable. What is the test of reason which makes a search reasonable? ”

“ The test is the reason underlying and expressed by the Fourth Amendment: the history and the experience which it embodies and the safeguards afforded by it against the evils to which it was a response. There must be a warrant to permit search, barring only inherent limitations upon that requirement when there is a good excuse for not getting a search warrant, i.e., the justifications that dispense with search warrants when searching the person in his extension, which is his body and that which his body can immediately control, and moving vehicles. ”

“ It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment. ”

“ The clear-cut issue before us is this: in making a lawful arrest, may arresting officers search without a search warrant not merely the person under arrest or things under his immediate physical control, but the premises where the arrest is made, although there was ample time to secure such a warrant and no danger that the 'papers and effects' for which a search warrant could be issued would be despoiled or destroyed? ”

“ The justification for intrusion into a man's privacy was to be determined by a magistrate uninfluenced by what may turn out to be a successful search for papers, the desire to search for which might be the very reason for the Fourth Amendment's prohibition. The framers did not regard judicial authorization as a formal requirement for a piece of paper. They deemed a man's belongings part of his personality and his life. ”

“ Respect for continuity in law, where reasons for change are wanting, alone requires adherence to Trupiano and the other decisions. Especially ought the Court not reenforce needlessly the instabilities of our day by giving fair ground for the belief that Law is the expression of chance-for instance, of unexpected changes in the Court's composition and the contingencies in the choice of successors. ”

“ Photographs can be so taken as to make a midget look like a giant, and vice versa. The same kind of distortion results if a legal doctrine embedded in a larger matrix of principle is taken out of the matrix and elevated to an independent position. In plain English, the right to search incident to arrest is merely one of those very narrow exceptions to the 'guaranties and immunities which we had inherited from our English ancestors, and which had, from time immemorial, been subject to certain well-recognized exceptions, arising from the necessities of the case.' Robertson v. ”

“ That only serves to encourage low standards, not to elevate them. It is unfair to our people to suggest that they cannot attain as high standards as do the British in guarding against police excesses without impairing effective means for combatting crime. ”

“ Such constitutional limitations arise from grievances, real or fancied, which their makers have suffered, and should go pari passu with the supposed evil. They withstand the winds of logic by the depth and toughness of their roots in the past. ”

“ Or, take a house or an apartment consisting largely of one big room serving as dining room, living room and bedroom. May search be made in a small room but not in such a large room? If you may search the bedroom part of a large room, why not a bedroom separated from the dining room by a partition? ”

“ In no other field has the law's uncertainty been more clearly manifested. To some extent that uncertainty may be unavoidable. The Trupiano case itself added new confusions 'in a field already replete with complexities.' Trupiano v. United States, supra, 334 U.S. 716, 68 S.Ct. 1238. But overruling that decision merely aggravates existing uncertainty. For as Mr. Justice Frankfurter points out, today's holding casts doubt on other cases recently decided. ”