Potter Stewart

“ United States No. 1, 267 U.S. 498, 504, 45 S.Ct. 414, 416, 69 L.Ed. 757. [18] The point is that it was not any contraband of that kind which was ordered to be seized, but literary material-'books, records, pamphlets, cards, receipts, lists, memoranda, pictures, recordings and other written instruments concerning the Communist Party of Texas, and the operations of the Communist Party in Texas.' The indiscriminate sweep of that language is constitutionally intolerable. To hold otherwise would be false to the terms of the Fourth Amendment, false to its meaning, and false to its history. ”

“ They were denounced by James Otis as 'the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book,' because they placed 'the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.' The historic occasion of that denunciation, in 1761 at Boston, has been characterized as 'perhaps the most prominent event which inaugurated the resistance of the colonies to the oppressions of the mother country. ”

“ In later years warrants were sometimes more specific in content, but they typically authorized of all persons connected of the premises of all persons connected with the publication of a particular libel, or the arrest and seizure of all the papers of a named person thought to be connected with a libel. ”

“ Texas, 377 U.S. 989, 84 S.Ct. 1911, 12 L.Ed.2d 1043. See Thompson v. City of Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 202-203, 80 S.Ct. 624, 626-627, 4 L.Ed.2d 654.
The petitioner has attacked the constitutional validity of this search and seizure upon several grounds. We rest our decision upon just one, without pausing to assess the substantiality of the others. For we think it is clear that this warrant was of a kind which it was the purpose of the Fourth Amendment to forbid-a general warrant. ”