| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment: A History of Search and Seizure, 1789–1868. By Andrew E. Taslitz. (New York: New York University Press, 2006. xii, 363 pp. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-8263-7.)

This book can be read as primarily an exciting and original work of history. It is a bracing contribution to the somewhat dormant field of constitutional history. The book can also be read as contemporary critique, an indictment of the current use of the Fourth Amendment by courts and police. With one eye fixed on the past and one on the present, these alternate readings are in danger of working at cross purposes. Historians are of course sensitive to "presentism," or making selective historical arguments that minimize complexity in the service of present-day policy arguments. Legal historians are increasingly sensitive to the flaws of "originalism," or the belief that in interpreting law and the Constitution the intent of historical actors can be fixed and ought to be binding on legal actors today. Andrew E. Taslitz here manages to avoid those potential pitfalls and has written a careful and nuanced account that will be of interest to any historian of the Constitution.

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