Harlem Teams for Self-Help, Inc. v. Department of Investigation

OPINION OF THE COURT

Kristin Booth Glen, J.

In 1791, the drafters of the Fourth Amendment were concerned to prevent those hated “general searches” of citizens’ homes by the King which had characterized the colonies prior to the revolution. In 1984, concerns for the protection of privacy are more frequently directed to the increasing bureaucratization of government and unsupervised administrative power than to overt misconduct by the police. The language of the Fourth Amendment is, however, broad enough to cover both these threats to privacy. As the Supreme Court wrote in Boyd v United States…