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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 19 2013 @ 05:49 AM EDT |
Do you know about James Otis, his struggle against the British
Empire, and the making of the Fourth Amendment? A brilliant, young attorney,
Otis became practically obsessed with what he viewed as a profound injustice
visited upon the American colonists by their British rulers: the writs of
assistance.
Writs of assistance were essentially general warrants. They
allowed British soldiers to raid and search homes based on no suspicion
whatsoever of criminal activity. Any soldier could violate the sanctity of
anyone’s person or home. The British foot soldiers didn’t have to have any
reason whatsoever for these searches. The writs of assistance were extreme
violations of the basic privacy and property rights of Americans, and the
American revolutionaries loathed them – no one more eloquently or passionately
than Otis.
[...]
Specific warrants describing the people, places or
things to be searched, and sworn by an affirmation, are legitimate and legal,
Otis said. But general warrants, those that do not require any specific
information or targeting – those warrants that enable the government to search
at will – are illegal. He said it like this:
Your Honors will
find in the old books concerning the office of a justice of the peace precedents
of general warrants to search suspected houses. But in more modern books you
will find only special warrants to search such and such houses, specially named,
in which the complainant has before sworn that he suspects his goods are
concealed; and will find it adjudged that special warrants only are legal. In
the same manner I rely on it, that the writ prayed for in this petition, being
general, is illegal. It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the
hands of every petty officer. I say I admit that special Writs of Assistance, to
search special places, may be granted to certain persons on oath; but I deny
that the writ now prayed for can be granted…
Although Otis lost
the case, his rhetoric profoundly altered the course of history. It just so
happened that a young John Adams was sitting in the courtroom on the day Otis
railed against the writs. That same John Adams would go on to pen the
Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment of which would
serve as inspiration for the Fourth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.
Kade Crockford,
ACLU
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James
Otis, Wikipedia [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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