Brandon Hasbrouck Publishes Article in UPenn Law Review Prof. Brandon Hasbrouck, along with coauthor Warren Buff '21L, published an article examining the historical foundations of the Fourth Amendment and its evolving application to modern policing.

By Law Communications
July 14, 2025

Washington and Lee law professor Brandon Hasbrouck, along with recent law graduate Warren Buff ’21L, has published an article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. The article, “Policing as General Warrants,” examines the historical and constitutional foundations of the Fourth Amendment and its evolving application to modern policing. It argues that the original purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent abuses such as warrantless, broad searches — practices familiar to early American merchants who suffered under British general warrants and writs of assistance.

Initially, the amendment had little impact at the state level, where local institutions like sheriffs and slave patrols exercised broad and often unchecked search powers. With the rise of professional policing before the Civil War and continuing through the 19th century, police forces increasingly operated independently of judicial oversight, targeting labor activists and marginalized communities. These actions echoed the coercive practices of slave patrols, yet went largely unchallenged under the Reconstruction Amendments.

“The modern practice of policing by means of roving, armed government agents conducting frequent, warrantless searches replicates the abuses of general warrants and writs of assistance. The application of those powers to undermine democratic remedies for economic injustices replicates the abuses of the slave patrols. This Article takes up the novel argument that in doing so, modern policing violates the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. While constitutional rights are necessarily open to interpretation by the courts, they should never be construed to provide less protection than they did when instituted. This Article advances the abolition constitutionalist proposition that the tools necessary to enact many of police abolition’s goals already exist within the Constitution. Reversing constitutional law’s historical errors to restore the common-law protections embodied in the Fourth Amendment would strip police of their slave patrol powers,” write the authors.

The article is available online at the W&L Law Scholarly Commons.

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