I am wondering how much longer a man’s home will remain his castle if the Supreme Court continues to chip away at its foundations. Sadly, two of the court’s recent cases — involving the questionable arrest of a robbery suspect on unrelated charges to avoid having to obtain a search warrant for his apartment, and qualified immunity for a police officer who injured a homeowner while engaged in the possibly unlawful pursuit of a misdemeanor suspect — suggest that this bedrock constitutional principle is in danger of crumbling.
The sanctity of the American home against government intrusion is one of our oldest and most enduring common-law legacies. It was a familiar and settled precept by the time the elder William Pitt uttered it — during an 18th-century debate on searches incident to a cider tax — that “the poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown.” And the Fourth Amendment lists our houses immediately after our persons as secure against unreasonable searches as a direct consequence of our Founding Fathers’ faith in Pitt’s view of the balance that permits liberty and order to co-exist.
