The Importance Of The Fourth Amendment

most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Justice Brandeis wholeheartedly believed that the Fourth Amendment protects privacy too.
In Poe v. Ullman Justice Harlan argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause could be used to strike the law. He stated “I consider that this Connecticut legislation violates the Fourteenth Amendment. It involves what by common understanding throughout the English-speaking world, must be granted to be the fundamental aspect of “liberty,” the privacy of the home in its most basic sense,
Connecticut Justice Douglas wrote for the majority opinion and said that “previous cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one.” (Con Law Textbook, pg. 546) Additionally, the Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”(Con Law Textbook, pg. 546) The right to privacy even when not explicitly included in the Bill of Rights, was found to be in the “penumbras” and “emanations” of other constitutional protections, such as the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment. Penumbras is important because it refers to a group of rights that are not explicitly stated in the constitution, but can be inferred from other enumerated rights. Lastly, Justice Douglas stated that “We recently referred to the Fourth Amendment as creating a “right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people.” We have had many controversies over these penumbral rights of privacy and repose. These cases bear witness that the right to privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one.” (Con Law Textbook, pg. 547) The right to privacy is seen as a right to "protect (citizens) from governmental