ABSTRACT
The Fourth Amendment was written to preserve Americans' freedoms to be private and left alone. The substance of the rights varies with the latest interpretation of the Supreme Court. Interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has fallen to the US Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, the ten amendments crafted largely by James Madison in response to Antifederalist concerns about overbearing federal power. The Fourth Amendment consists of two clauses, the Reasonableness Clause, which forbids the government from performing any unreasonable search or seizure, and the Warrant Clause, which describes the necessary ingredients for an arrest or search warrant. The Burger and Rehnquist Courts have prevented exclusion of evidence due to Fourth Amendment violations by limiting Fourth Amendment application. As originally crafted, the Fourth Amendment, as well as the rest of the Bill of Rights, limited only federal government officials.
