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Now-Forgotten Common-Law Warrantless Arrest Standards and the Original Understanding of “Due Process of Law”

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Now-Forgotten Common-Law Warrantless Arrest Standards and the Original Understanding of “Due Process of Law” File: 02 Davies Master Dec 19 Created on: 12/19/2007 10:40:00 AM Last Printed: 12/20/2007 3:39:00 PM CORRECTING SEARCH-AND-SEIZURE HISTORY: NOW-FORGOTTEN COMMON-LAW WARRANTLESS ARREST STANDARDS AND THE ORIGINAL UNDERSTANDING OF “DUE PROCESS OF LAW” Thomas Y. Davies* “Real history is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own.”** Introduction ...............................................................................................3 A. The Errors in Conventional Fourth Amendment History....................... 5 B. Common-Law Arrest Standards and the “Law of the Land” and “Due Process of Law” Provisions .................................................... 7 C. Recovering Authentic Constitutional History........................................ 13 D. The Organization of this Article............................................................. 21 I. The Errors in Conventional Search-and-Seizure History ................25 A. Contemporary Fourth Amendment Doctrine......................................... 25 B. The Conventional History....................................................................... 27 C. The General Warrant Controversies...................................................... 28 * E.E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law and Alumni Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law. The author wishes to thank Professor Thomas K. Clancy, Director of The National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law, for inviting him to participate in this symposium. He also thanks the National Judicial College for the opportunity to make an oral presentation on the same topic. Additionally, the author thanks his colleagues Professor Otis H. Stephens, for helpful comments on a draft of this article, and Professor Sibyl Marshall, for research assis- tance. Of course, the views and any errors are solely the responsibility of the author. As indicated in the notes, this article extends the author’s criticisms of conven- tional search-and-seizure history in previous articles published in the Michigan Law Review and the Wake Forest Law Review. Except when noted, passages from historical sources in this article are presented with the historical spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, but in modern typeface and with modern spacing. ** HERBERT BUTTERFIELD, THE WHIG INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 16 (1951). 1 File: 02 Davies Master Dec 19 Created on: 12/19/2007 10:40:00 AM Last Printed: 12/20/2007 3:39:00 PM 2 MISSISSIPPI LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 77 D. The Focused Ban Against Too-Loose Warrants..................................... 32 II. “The Law of The Land” and “Due Process of Law”..........................39 A. The Shortcomings in the Conventional History of Due Process ........... 39 B. Magna Carta, Coke, and the Whig Canon ............................................. 43 C. Coke’s Rendition of the Law of Warrantless Arrest in Magna Carta 29................................................................................ 47 D. The Continuity of Common-Law Arrest Doctrine ................................. 72 E. The Framing-Era Connotations of “the Law of the Land” and “Due Process of Law”..................................................................... 81 F. Summary ................................................................................................. 86 III. The Two Search-and-Seizure Provisions in the State Declarations of Rights ............................................................87 A. The State Declarations of Rights............................................................ 89 B. Search-and-Seizure Protections in the Initial 1776 Virginia Declaration............................................................................. 93 C. The 1776 Maryland Provisions............................................................. 101 D. The 1776 North Carolina Provisions.................................................... 103 E. The 1776 Pennsylvania Provisions and the 1777 Vermont Provisions ............................................................................ 104 F. States that Did Not Adopt Two Search-and-Seizure Provisions......... 108 G. The 1780 Massachusetts Provisions .................................................... 112 H. The 1784 New Hampshire Provisions.................................................. 119 I. New York’s Shift to “Due Process of Law” ............................................ 121 IV. Search-and-Seizure Provisions in the Federal Bill ......................127 A. The Demand for a Federal Bill of Rights ............................................. 127 B. State Ratification Convention Proposed Amendments ....................... 131 C. Madison’s Proposals for a Bill of Rights............................................... 136 D. The Framing of the “Due Process of Law” Clause in the Fifth Amendment..................................................................... 143 E. The Framing of the Fourth Amendment.............................................. 158 F. Summary ............................................................................................... 171 V. The Post-Framing Transformation of Criminal Procedure ..........172 A. The Loss of the Cokean Conception of Due Process of Law ................ 173 B. The Relaxation of Common-Law Warrantless Arrest Standards and the Emergence of Investigatory Criminal Procedure ............... 181 C. The Supreme Court’s Reinvention of Search-and-Seizure Doctrine.. 195 D. The Supreme Court’s Reinvention and Expansion of Fourth Amendment Doctrine ......................................................................... 200 File: 02 Davies Master Dec 19 Created on: 12/19/2007 10:40:00 AM Last Printed: 12/20/2007 3:39:00 PM 2007] CORRECTING SEARCH-AND-SEIZURE HISTORY 3 VI. Conclusion........................................................................................219 A. The Fictional Character of Recent “Originalist” Search-and-Seizure Claims................................................................ 221 B. The Overall Trajectory of Constitutional Search-and-Seizure Doctrine ............................................................. 223 C. Whether State Courts Should be Free to “Depart” from Current Federal Doctrine................................................................... 223 INTRODUCTION The large question in this symposium is whether it is ap- propriate for state courts to “depart” from the Federal Supreme Court’s construction of search-and-seizure doctrine. Because the Federal Supreme Court has adopted a fairly minimalist view of search-and-seizure protections during recent decades,1 the practical question is whether it is appropriate for state courts to construe state constitutions to provide stronger state search-and-seizure protections than the federal protections. This article assesses the implications that the history of search- and-seizure doctrine holds for that question. Some recent Federal Supreme Court opinions have pur- ported to base search-and-seizure decisions on the original or intended meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Because it may appear that those recent assertions are at least broadly consis- tent with the conventional history of search-and-seizure doc- trine, those originalist claims may seem plausible. Hence, be- cause it may seem that history is on the side of the Federal Court’s construction, it may seem that history inclines against the legitimacy of state court “departures” from the federal con- struction. I argue that is not the case. As I have on prior occasions, I argue that the current conception of Fourth Amendment “rea- sonableness” substantially understates the limits that the 1 For a brief summary of current doctrine and recent developments, see for exam- ple, Craig M. Bradley, The Fourth Amendment: Be Reasonable, in THE REHNQUIST LEGACY 81-105 (Craig Bradley ed., 2006); Thomas Y. Davies, Fourth Amendment, in THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 360-64 (2d ed. Kermit L. Hall ed., 2005). File: 02 Davies Master Dec 19 Created on: 12/19/2007 10:40:00 AM Last Printed: 12/20/2007 3:39:00 PM 4 MISSISSIPPI LAW JOURNAL [VOL. 77 Framers thought they had placed on government searches and seizures. I argue that the conventional history of the Fourth Amendment is itself invalid,2 and that the historical claims in recent Supreme Court search-and-seizure rulings usually amount to only fictional originalism.3 Thus, I conclude that the authentic history does not oblige state courts to defer to the Federal Supreme Court’s construction of search-and-seizure rights. I do not deny that a substantial literature on search-and- seizure history has endorsed the notion that the Fourth Amendment was always understood to create a comprehensive reasonableness standard applicable to all forms of government intrusions. However, I argue that the conventional history re- flected in this literature is not grounded in fact. Rather, previ- ous commentaries typically have not inquired whether the his- tory announced in modern Supreme Court opinions was actually continuous with the historical meaning so much as they have interpreted the historical sources to comport with the modern Supreme Court’s rendition of Fourth Amendment reasonable- ness. As a result, the conventional history is both incorrect and incomplete. It is incorrect insofar as it treats the Fourth Amendment and the comparable state warrant provisions as though
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