Balkanization: State Capacities and the Fourth Amendment

Balkanization: State Capacities and the Fourth Amendment by Mark Graber (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2014/01/state-capacities-and-fourth-amendment.html):

Lord Chief Justice Camden in Entick v. Carrington (1765) famously declared, “By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass.” Whether these laws were of ancient lineage is doubtful. English law in the seventeenth century permitted local officials to enter private dwellings when searching for illegal game. No doubt a good common law attorney can find distinctions between what were deemed illegal searches during the late eighteenth century and what were deemed legal searches during the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, developments in state capacity probably better explain the origins of the Fourth Amendment than practice dating from the Magna Carta, the Assize of Clarendon, the Norman invasion or some other event marking the beginning of “time immemorial.”