A New Report of Entick v. Carrington (1765)

Abstract

The Supreme Court has described Entick v. Carrington (1765) as “the true and ultimate expression of constitutional law” for the Founding generation. For more than 250 years, judges and commentators have read that case for guidance about the rule of law, executive authority, and the original meaning of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But we have been reading a flawed version. This Article publishes, for the first time, a previously unknown manuscript report of Entick v. Carrington. We explain why this version is more reliable than other reports of the case, and how this new discovery challenges prevailing assumptions about Entick’s legal and historical meaning. Although we leave a full reevaluation of Entick for future scholarship, we show that any future judicial or academic discussion of the case must take this new report into account.

Keywords: legal history, Fourth Amendment, constitutional law, rule of law, law reporting, precedent