Taft, William Howard

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) was the twenty-seventh president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930). He was the only chief justice—or any justice—also to have been president. As chief justice, he wrote the opinion of the Court in two important cases interpreting the Fourth Amendment—Carroll v. United States (1925) and Olmstead v. United States (1928)—although the second one was overruled decades later. Taft had more federal executive experience than any other chief justice, and his Fourth Amendment opinions reflect a strong support for executive power. Taft served in the executive positions of solicitor general of the United States, governor-general of the Philippines, and secretary of war, as well as president.

Taft had much opportunity to refine his approach to interpretation of the Constitution. Upon leaving the White House in 1913, Taft was appointed Kent Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale Law School and was elected president of the American Bar Association. In his writings from this period, he espoused a constitutional jurisprudence emphasizing original intent. Taft's interpretation of the Fourth Amendment is of great historical importance because he was one of the first justices to analyze its meaning in the context of technological changes that the Framers of the Bill of Rights could not have anticipated.

The first of these innovations was the advent of the automobile. In Carroll v. United States (1925), writing for the Court, Taft held that police searches of automobiles without a warrant do not violate the Fourth Amendment when the police have probable cause to believe that contraband will be found in the vehicle. The standard for establishing a warrant threshold, he said, is rationality. It is not reasonable to demand that police go to a judge and request a warrant to search an automobile because the driver can easily evade the search by moving the vehicle while the police are seeking judicial permission. Taft admitted that the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches applies to automobiles, and, therefore, police must have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and evidence of the offense is likely to be found before stopping and searching the vehicle. The warrant requirement does not apply. Taft ruled, however, that the police cannot search automobiles at random. As a result of the Court's earlier decision in Weeks v. United States (1914), if the evidence had been seized in violation of the driver's Fourth Amendment rights, it would have to be excluded as evidence in any subsequent trial. Carroll has remained good law, and police officers can stop and search vehicles without a warrant when they have a reason to believe it contains criminal evidence. In Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz (1990), however, the Court upheld the power of the police to stop automobiles at sobriety checkpoints to determine whether the driver is intoxicated even though there was no reasonable individualized suspicion of such a crime.

The second technological innovation that Taft addressed in his decisions was electronic communication. In the majority opinion in Olmstead v. United States (1928), Taft said that the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment does not apply to law enforcement wiretaps because a wiretap is not a search. Taft took the approach, based on his understanding of the Framers' original intention, that the Fourth Amendment protects private property, not an individual's privacy. Since a wiretap does not require the police to enter someone's home or office, there is no governmental interference with the suspect's property. Because a conversation, moreover, is not [Page 610]tangible, overhearing it does not constitute a “seizure” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Although eavesdropping may be considered unethical conduct, the obligation of law enforcement officers to protect the public safety is of higher value, concluded Taft. The Court, however, took the unusual step of reversing its own precedent in Katz v. United States (1967). The majority adopted the approach recommended by Justice Louis Brandeis in his Olmstead dissent that the Fourth Amendment protects privacy, not property.

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