Search and seizure

Search and seizure is a legal procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems whereby police or other authorities and their agents, who suspect that a crime has been committed, do a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence to the crime.
Some countries have provisions in their constitutions that provide the public with the right to be free from "unreasonable" search and seizure. This right is generally based on the premise that everyone is entitled to a reasonable right to privacy.
Though interpretation may vary, this right sometimes requires law enforcement to obtain a search warrant before engaging in any form of search and seizure. In cases where evidence is seized in a search, that evidence might be rejected by court procedures, such as with a motion to suppress the evidence under the exclusionary rule.


In corporate and administrative law there has been an evolution of Supreme Court interpretation in favor of stronger government in regards to investigatory power. In the Supreme Court case Federal Trade Commission v. American Tobacco Co,, the federal court ruled that the FTC, while having been granted a broad subpoena power, did not have the right to a general "fishing expedition" into the private papers, to search both relevant and irrelevant, hoping that something would come up. Justice Holmes ruled that this would go against "the spirit and the letter" of the Fourth Amendment.
Later, in the 1946 Oklahoma Press Pub. Co. v. Walling,, there was a distinction made between a "figurative or constructive search" and an actual search and seizure. The court held that constructive searches are limited by the Fourth Amendment, where actual search and seizure requires a warrant based on “probable cause”. In the case of a constructive search where the records and papers sought are of corporate character, the court held that the Fourth Amendment does not apply, since corporations are not entitled to all the constitutional protections created in order to protect the rights of private individuals.