Joseph Story Quotes

The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.

The Fourth Amendment was what we fought the Revolution over!

If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.

The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution's protection of privacy.

The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to enjoy and acquire property

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

Personal privacy is a closely held American value.

I believe that it is critical for this country to have a zone of privacy —– for everyone,

What a man thinks is of no concern to government.

Various guarantees [of the Constitution] create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the 1st Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its protection against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The 4th Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures." The 5th Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which the government may not force him to surrender to his detriment.

The liberal, emphasizing the civil and property rights of the individual, insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make the state his servant.

Before the American Revolution, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures had slight existence. British policies assaulted the privacy of dwellings and places of business, particularly when royal revenues were at stake.

If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.

Even if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.

… it [liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home, bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience and generally, to enjoy those privileges long recognized in common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.

Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

I was lecturing at the Columbia Journalism School of Education. I asked them about what was happening to the Fourth Amendment. I said, "By the way, do you know what is in the Fourth Amendment?" One student responded, "Is that the right to bear arms?" It's hard to believe these are bright students.

I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.

When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights.

The protection of private property does more than promote market efficiency; it enhances the level of human freedom in the most intimate and personal parts of our lives.

The rule of law does not guarantee freedom, since general law as well as personal edicts can be tyrannical. But increasing reliance on the rule of law clearly played a major role in transforming Western society from a world in which the ordinary citizen was literally subject to the arbitrary will of his master to a world in which the ordinary citizen could regard himself as his own master

I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington.

It is admitted that all men have an equal right to the enjoyment of their life, property and personal security; and it is the duty as it is the object, of government to protect every man in this enjoyment.