Summary
The prohibition on general warrants is among the founding generation's most categorical constitutional commitments. This article recovers the historical record, from the colonial writs of assistance through Entick v. Carrington and the state constitutional responses, and argues that the Fourth Amendment's core prohibition reaches governmental relationships of comprehensive, standing, discretionary surveillance authority, not only individual unreasonable searches.
It then examines federal and state database systems, including fusion centers and state data-sharing platforms, and finds that they exhibit every characteristic James Otis identified in 1761. Property-based trespass theory and the third-party doctrine cannot reach the problem, because the violation is systemic and architectural rather than transactional. Only a structural remedy can restore the Amendment's guarantee.
Key claims
- Otis's characteristics are the operative constitutional test the Amendment codified.
- Modern integrated databases satisfy every element of that test.
- Transactional doctrines are structurally unsuited to an architectural violation.
Where it fits
Read on the site: Proposition 1: the capability is the wrong.
Cite as
Michael G. Leahy, Digital General Warrants: Why Government Databases Violate the Fourth Amendment (2026), https://ssrn.com/abstract=6434318.