Writ Of Assistance: Fill & Download for Free

At the time, they were pretty upset about colonial governors and their agents issuing general Writs of Assistance to British customs officers. The Brits thought the colonists were dodging all manner of commercial taxes, and they wanted their money.These writs [on the surface] allowed British officers, agents, and soldiers to enter colonial homes at any time of day or night, to search any part of that home, and to seize any property they claimed they were looking for.They were not responsible for what they broke, damage, or “accidentally took”. Further, these permissions slips could be freely transferred from person to person. And they weren’t one time authorizations: they lasted for six months. And these broad and lasting powers were used to harass colonials.Not only is it an affront to basic dignity and the sanctity of the home and family, the broadness of the writs turned them into “I can do whatever I want” slips for the soldiers. And in some claimed cases, they were nothing more than a thin veneer of legality for what was otherwise would be outright robbery. Still in others, colonial merchants claim that British officers were uncouth to their wives and daughters.As you can probably read into this, both sides had their stories and side to what was going on. And the British chose a very heavy-handed way to try to collect money. And it (probably) did cause some unpleasant “side effects”.However, one of the colonial claims was that they had the rights of ordinary Englishmen. And that this made these writs of assistance unlawful. They could not be disturbed in the dead of night by the King’s agents to invade their homes, toss the place, and take whatever they wished. The King’s colonial courts repeatedly disagreed: the colonists did not have the rights of Englishmen.That first claim by the King’s judicial agents that the colonists were not equal to their English cousins was probably the time when the British lost their cause by dividing them and us. At that time, the King said there were his subjects in Britain with all of their ancient rights—but everyone in the colonies were merely his imperial pawns, to do with however he pleased.Well, the American colonists didn’t like that very much.After the American Revolution and during the creation of the U.S. Constitution, many of the Founding Fathers were concerned that they had thrown off the large government of the British King… but the Constitution would create an equally uncontrollable, large, and powerful substitute.As they said, they did not fight a war to throw off a king to simply replace him with another tyrant.We can look to the Preamble to the Bill of rights for their specific reasons for including the Fourth Amendment:THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.And so, to prevent the federal government from behaving in these unpleasant ways, the Founding Fathers passed several amendments to prevent the federal government’s powers from being expanded beyond the boundaries they had intended. At least, that was their hope.

Writs of assistance were blanket search warrants that allowed government agents to search for anything, anywhere,and from anybody they chose. They were generally misused by these agents and were highly disliked by Americans.Controversy over these general writs of assistance inspired the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids general search warrants.The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements warrants:warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate,justified by probable cause,supported by oath or affirmation,and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

While Mr Evans gives an admirably short description of the Fourth Amendment (from a law student), he fails to get to the substance of the question, which is the History of the Fourth Amendment.I will be brief. I had a history prof who proposed that the British penchant for writs of assistance were the cause of the War of Independence, and then proceeded to lay out his arguments in favor of this proposition. The Crown wanted it's tax revenue, and the Colonials had a tendency to smuggle in items so they didn't pay the hefty taxes. As a consequence, the Crown would provide writs of assistance (blanket warrants allowing officials to enter any premises and search for and confiscate contraband that only expired 6 months after the death of the Monach who authorized them) to its officials that Colonials felt violated the principles of the English legal system and the "a man's home is his castle to defend" ideal. Colonials were very, very upset by this violation of their property and privacy that left them subject to search and seizure day after day, year after year, with no end in sight. Even the death of a King was a mere lull in searches, because new writs were easily issued. Thus they rose up, partly because they were upset about the taxes, but mostly because they felt abused by the Crown in their own homes.When the Bill of Rights was written, the issues of search and seizure and writs of assistance were near the top of the list of abuses the Founding Fathers wanted to make sure that the new federal and state governments could not indulge in. They'd gone to war over it once already, and they knew people wouldn't stand for it happening again. Thus, the Fourth Amendment.