Justice Steward focuses closely on the English Court of King’s Bench case Entick v Carrington (1765), which rejected a search warrant against a bookseller for seditious libel.Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. at 483 fn.10 citing Lasson, Development of the Fourth Amendment, p. 43. Calling Lord Camden’s opinion the “wellspring” of the Fourth Amendment,Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. at 484 fn.13 citing Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886). Justice Steward draws the King’s overreach there in close parallel with Texas’s search of John Stanford here.Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. at 483 fn.11 citing Erskine May, Constitutional History of England 246 (Am. ed. 1864).
