ABSTRACT
Most people imagine the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures provided by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution as being applicable in the context of criminal investigations, but the Fourth Amendment comes into play when administrative agencies seek to conduct health and safety inspections. The Court first explicitly considered the constitutionality of warrantless administrative searches in Frank v. Maryland, 359 US. 360. The Court distinguished between criminal searches pursuant to penal law versus administrative inspections pursuant to regulatory statutes on the basis of their consequences. The Court's subsequent decisions affirmed the applicability of the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement to administrative searches but simultaneously carved out permissible exceptions, the most notable being the licensing exception, which the Court first addressed in Colonnade Catering Corp. v. United States.
