OPINION OF THE COURT GEORGIA V. RANDOLPH 547 U. S. ____ (2006) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 04-1067 GEORGIA, PETITIONER v. SCOTT FITZ
RANDOLPH

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
georgia

															[March 22, 2006]

															   Justice Souter delivered the
opinion of the Court.

															   The Fourth Amendment recognizes a
valid warrantless entry and search of premises when police obtain
the voluntary consent of an occupant who shares, or is reasonably
believed to share, authority over the area in common with a
co-occupant who later objects to the use of evidence so obtained. Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U. S. 177 (1990); United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974). The question
here is whether such an evidentiary seizure is likewise lawful with
the permission of one occupant when the other, who later seeks to
suppress the evidence, is present at the scene and expressly
refuses to consent. We hold that, in the circumstances here at
issue, a physically present co-occupant’s stated refusal to permit
entry prevails, rendering the warrantless search unreasonable and
invalid as to him.

															I

															   Respondent Scott Randolph and his
wife, Janet, separated in late May 2001, when she left the marital
residence in Americus, Georgia, and went to stay with her parents
in Canada, taking their son and some belongings. In July, she
returned to the Americus house with the child, though the record
does not reveal whether her object was reconciliation or retrieval
of remaining possessions.

															   On the morning of July 6, she
complained to the police that after a domestic dispute her husband
took their son away, and when officers reached the house she told
them that her husband was a cocaine user whose habit had caused
financial troubles. She mentioned the marital problems and said
that she and their son had only recently returned after a stay of
several weeks with her parents. Shortly after the police arrived,
Scott Randolph returned and explained that he had removed the child
to a neighbor’s house out of concern that his wife might take the
boy out of the country again; he denied cocaine use, and countered
that it was in fact his wife who abused drugs and alcohol.

															   One of the officers, Sergeant Murray, went
with Janet Randolph to reclaim the child, and when they returned
she not only renewed her complaints about her husband’s drug use,
but also volunteered that there were “ ‘items of drug
evidence’ ” in the house. Brief for Petitioner 3. Sergeant
Murray asked Scott Randolph for permission to search the house,
which he unequivocally refused.

															   The sergeant turned to Janet Randolph for
consent to search, which she readily gave. She led the officer
upstairs to a bedroom that she identified as Scott’s, where the
sergeant noticed a section of a drinking straw with a powdery
residue he suspected was cocaine. He then left the house to get an
evidence bag from his car and to call the district attorney’s
office, which instructed him to stop the search and apply for a
warrant. When Sergeant Murray returned to the house, Janet Randolph
withdrew her consent. The police took the straw to the police
station, along with the Randolphs. After getting a search warrant,
they returned to the house and seized further evidence of drug use,
on the basis of which Scott Randolph was indicted for possession of
cocaine.

															   He moved to suppress the evidence, as products
of a warrantless search of his house unauthorized by his wife’s
consent over his express refusal. The trial court denied the
motion, ruling that Janet Randolph had common authority to consent
to the search.

															   The Court of Appeals of Georgia reversed, 264
Ga. App. 396, 590 S. E. 2d 834 (2003), and was itself
sustained by the State Supreme Court, principally on the ground
that “the consent to conduct a warrantless search of a residence
given by one occupant is not valid in the face of the refusal of
another occupant who is physically present at the scene to permit a
warrantless search.” 278 Ga. 614, 604 S. E. 2d 835, 836
(2004). The Supreme Court of Georgia acknowledged this Court’s
holding in Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 , that “the consent of
one who possesses common authority over premises or effects is
valid as against the absent, nonconsenting person with whom that
authority is shared,” id. , at 170, and found Matlock distinguishable just because Scott Randolph was
not “absent” from the colloquy on which the police relied for
consent to make the search. The State Supreme Court stressed that
the officers in Matlock had not been “faced with the
physical presence of joint occupants, with one consenting to the
search and the other objecting.” 278 Ga., at 615, 604 S. E.
2d, at 837. It held that an individual who chooses to live with
another assumes a risk no greater than “ ‘an inability to
control access to the premises during [his] absence,’ ” ibid. (quoting 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §8.3(d),
p. 731 (3d ed. 1996) (hereinafter LaFave)), and does not
contemplate that his objection to a request to search commonly
shared premises, if made, will be overlooked.

															   We granted certiorari to resolve a split of
authority on whether one occupant may give law enforcement
effective consent to search shared premises, as against a co-tenant
who is present and states a refusal to permit the search.[ Footnote 1 ] 544 U. S. 973 (2005). We
now affirm.

															II

															   To the Fourth Amendment rule
ordinarily prohibiting the warrantless entry of a person’s house as
unreasonable per se , Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 ,
586 (1980); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 , 454–455 (1971), one
“jealously and carefully drawn” exception, Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493 , 499
(1958), recognizes the validity of searches with the voluntary
consent of an individual possessing authority, Rodriguez, 497 U. S., at 181. That person might be the householder against
whom evidence is sought, Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218 , 222
(1973), or a fellow occupant who shares common authority over
property, when the suspect is absent, Matlock, supra, at 170, and the exception for consent extends even
to entries and searches with the permission of a co-occupant whom
the police reasonably, but erroneously, believe to possess shared
authority as an occupant, Rodriguez , supra, at
186. None of our co-occupant consent-to-search cases, however, has
presented the further fact of a second occupant physically present
and refusing permission to search, and later moving to suppress
evidence so obtained.[ Footnote
2 ] The significance of such a refusal turns on the
underpinnings of the co-occupant consent rule, as recognized since Matlock .

															A

															   The defendant in that case was
arrested in the yard of a house where he lived with a Mrs. Graff
and several of her relatives, and was detained in a squad car
parked nearby. When the police went to the door, Mrs. Graff
admitted them and consented to a search of the house. 415 U. S., at
166. In resolving the defendant’s objection to use of the evidence
taken in the warrantless search, we said that “the consent of one
who possesses common authority over premises or effects is valid as
against the absent, nonconsenting person with whom that authority
is shared.” Id. , at 170. Consistent with our prior
understanding that Fourth Amendment rights are not limited by the
law of property, cf. Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 ,
352–353 (1967), we explained that the third party’s “common
authority” is not synonymous with a technical property
interest:

															“The authority which justified the third-party
consent does not rest upon the law of property, with its attendant
historical and legal refinement, but rests rather on mutual use of
the property by persons generally having joint access or control
for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any
of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his
own right and that the others have assumed the risk that one of
their number might permit the common area to be searched.” 415 U.
S., at 171, n. 7 (citations omitted).

															See also Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731 ,
740 (1969) (“[I]n allowing [his cousin to share use of a duffel
bag] and in leaving it in his house, [the suspect] must be taken to
have assumed the risk that [the cousin] would allow someone else to
look inside”). The common authority that counts under the Fourth
Amendment may thus be broader than the rights accorded by property
law, see Rodriguez , supra, at 181–182 (consent is
sufficient when given by a person who reasonably appears to have
common authority but who, in fact, has no property interest in the
premises searched), although its limits, too, reflect specialized
tenancy arrangements apparent to the police, see Chapman v. United States, 365 U. S. 610 (1961)
(landlord could not consent to search of tenant’s home).

															   The constant element in assessing
Fourth Amendment reasonableness in the consent cases, then, is the
great significance given to widely shared social expectations,
which are naturally enough influenced by the law of property, but
not controlled by its rules. Cf. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128 , 144,
n. 12 (1978) (an expectation of privacy is reasonable if it
has “a source outside of the Fourth Amendment, either by reference
to concepts of real or personal property law or to understandings
that are recognized and permitted by society”). Matlock accordingly not only holds that a solitary co-inhabitant may
sometimes consent to a search of shared premises, but stands for
the proposition that the reasonableness of such a search is in
significant part a function of commonly held understanding about
the authority that co-inhabitants may exercise in ways that affect
each other’s interests.

															B Matlock ’s example of
common understanding is readily apparent. When someone comes to the
door of a domestic dwelling with a baby at her hip, as Mrs. Graff
did, she shows that she belongs there, and that fact standing alone
is enough to tell a law enforcement officer or any other visitor
that if she occupies the place along with others, she probably
lives there subject to the assumption tenants usually make about
their common authority when they share quarters. They understand
that any one of them may admit visitors, with the consequence that
a guest obnoxious to one may nevertheless be admitted in his
absence by another. As Matlock put it, shared tenancy is
understood to include an “assumption of risk,” on which police
officers are entitled to rely, and although some group living
together might make an exceptional arrangement that no one could
admit a guest without the agreement of all, the chance of such an
eccentric scheme is too remote to expect visitors to investigate a
particular household’s rules before accepting an invitation to come
in. So, Matlock relied on what was usual and placed no
burden on the police to eliminate the possibility of atypical
arrangements, in the absence of reason to doubt that the regular
scheme was in place.

															   It is also easy to imagine
different facts on which, if known, no common authority could
sensibly be suspected. A person on the scene who identifies
himself, say, as a landlord or a hotel manager calls up no
customary understanding of authority to admit guests without the
consent of the current occupant. See Chapman v. United
States, supra (landlord); Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483 (1964)
(hotel manager). A tenant in the ordinary course does not take
rented premises subject to any formal or informal agreement that
the landlord may let visitors into the dwelling, Chapman , supra, at 617, and a hotel guest customarily has no reason
to expect the manager to allow anyone but his own employees into
his room, see Stoner , supra, at 489; see also United States v. Jeffers , 342 U. S. 48 , 51 (1951)
(hotel staff had access to room for purposes of cleaning and
maintenance, but no authority to admit police). In these
circumstances, neither state-law property rights, nor common
contractual arrangements, nor any other source points to a common
understanding of authority to admit third parties generally without
the consent of a person occupying the premises. And when it comes
to searching through bureau drawers, there will be instances in
which even a person clearly belonging on premises as an occupant
may lack any perceived authority to consent; “a child of eight
might well be considered to have the power to consent to the police
crossing the threshold into that part of the house where any
caller, such as a pollster or salesman, might well be admitted,” 4
LaFave §8.4(c), at 207 (4th ed. 2004), but no one would reasonably
expect such a child to be in a position to authorize anyone to
rummage through his parents’ bedroom.

															C

															   Although we have not dealt
directly with the reasonableness of police entry in reliance on
consent by one occupant subject to immediate challenge by another,
we took a step toward the issue in an earlier case dealing with the
Fourth Amendment rights of a social guest arrested at premises the
police entered without a warrant or the benefit of any exception to
the warrant requirement. Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U. S. 91 (1990), held that overnight houseguests have a legitimate
expectation of privacy in their temporary quarters because “it is
unlikely that [the host] will admit someone who wants to see or
meet with the guest over the objection of the guest,” id. ,
at 99. If that customary expectation of courtesy or deference is a
foundation of Fourth Amendment rights of a houseguest, it
presumably should follow that an inhabitant of shared premises may
claim at least as much, and it turns out that the co-inhabitant
naturally has an even stronger claim.

															   To begin with, it is fair to say
that a caller standing at the door of shared premises would have no
confidence that one occupant’s invitation was a sufficiently good
reason to enter when a fellow tenant stood there saying, “stay
out.” Without some very good reason, no sensible person would go
inside under those conditions. Fear for the safety of the occupant
issuing the invitation, or of someone else inside, would be thought
to justify entry, but the justification then would be the personal
risk, the threats to life or limb, not the disputed
invitation.[ Footnote 3 ]

															   The visitor’s reticence without some such good
reason would show not timidity but a realization that when people
living together disagree over the use of their common quarters, a
resolution must come through voluntary accommodation, not by
appeals to authority. Unless the people living together fall within
some recognized hierarchy, like a household of parent and child or
barracks housing military personnel of different grades, there is
no societal understanding of superior and inferior, a fact
reflected in a standard formulation of domestic property law, that
“[e]ach cotenant . . . has the right to use and enjoy the entire
property as if he or she were the sole owner, limited only by the
same right in the other cotenants.” 7 R. Powell, Powell on Real
Property §50.03[1], p. 50–14 (M. Wolf gen. ed. 2005). The want
of any recognized superior authority among disagreeing tenants is
also reflected in the law’s response when the disagreements cannot
be resolved. The law does not ask who has the better side of the
conflict; it simply provides a right to any co-tenant, even the
most unreasonable, to obtain a decree partitioning the property
(when the relationship is one of co-ownership) and terminating the
relationship. See, e.g., 2 H. Tiffany, Real Property
§§468, 473, 474, pp. 297, 307–309 (3d ed. 1939 and 2006 Cum.
Supp.). And while a decree of partition is not the answer to
disagreement among rental tenants, this situation resembles
co-ownership in lacking the benefit of any understanding that one
or the other rental co-tenant has a superior claim to control the
use of the quarters they occupy together. In sum, there is no
common understanding that one co-tenant generally has a right or
authority to prevail over the express wishes of another, whether
the issue is the color of the curtains or invitations to
outsiders.

															D

															   Since the co-tenant wishing to
open the door to a third party has no recognized authority in law
or social practice to prevail over a present and objecting
co-tenant, his disputed invitation, without more, gives a police
officer no better claim to reasonableness in entering than the
officer would have in the absence of any consent at all.
Accordingly, in the balancing of competing individual and
governmental interests entailed by the bar to unreasonable
searches, Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County
of San Francisco, 387 U. S. 523 , 536–537
(1967), the cooperative occupant’s invitation adds nothing to the
government’s side to counter the force of an objecting individual’s
claim to security against the government’s intrusion into his
dwelling place. Since we hold to the “centuries-old principle of
respect for the privacy of the home,” Wilson v. Layne , 526
U. S. 603 , 610 (1999), “it is beyond dispute that the home is
entitled to special protection as the center of the private lives
of our people,” Minnesota v. Carter , 525 U. S. 83 , 99 (1998)
(Kennedy, J., concurring). We have, after all, lived our whole
national history with an understanding of “the ancient adage that a
man’s home is his castle [to the point that t]he poorest man may in
his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown,” Miller v. United States , 357 U. S. 301 , 307
(1958) (internal quotation marks omitted).[ Footnote 4 ]

															   Disputed permission is thus no
match for this central value of the Fourth Amendment, and the
State’s other countervailing claims do not add up to outweigh
it.[ Footnote 5 ] Yes, we
recognize the consenting tenant’s interest as a citizen in bringing
criminal activity to light, see Coolidge , 403 U. S., at
488 (“[I]t is no part of the policy underlying the Fourth …
Amendmen[t] to discourage citizens from aiding to the utmost of
their ability in the apprehension of criminals”). And we understand
a co-tenant’s legitimate self-interest in siding with the police to
deflect suspicion raised by sharing quarters with a criminal, see 4
LaFave §8.3(d), at 162, n. 72 (“The risk of being convicted of
possession of drugs one knows are present and has tried to get the
other occupant to remove is by no means insignificant”); cf. Schneckloth, 412 U. S., at 243 (evidence obtained pursuant
to a consent search “may insure that a wholly innocent person is
not wrongly charged with a criminal offense”).

															   But society can often have the benefit of
these interests without relying on a theory of consent that ignores
an inhabitant’s refusal to allow a warrantless search. The
co-tenant acting on his own initiative may be able to deliver
evidence to the police, Coolidge , supra, at
487–489 (suspect’s wife retrieved his guns from the couple’s house
and turned them over to the police), and can tell the
police what he knows, for use before a magistrate in getting a
warrant.[ Footnote 6 ] The
reliance on a co-tenant’s information instead of disputed consent
accords with the law’s general partiality toward “police action
taken under a warrant [as against] searches and seizures without
one,” United States v. Ventresca, 380 U. S. 102 , 107
(1965); “the informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates
empowered to issue warrants as to what searches and seizures are
permissible under the Constitution are to be preferred over the
hurried action of officers,” United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452 , 464
(1932). Nor should this established policy
of Fourth Amendment law be undermined by the principal dissent’s
claim that it shields spousal abusers and other violent co-tenants
who will refuse to allow the police to enter a dwelling when their
victims ask the police for help, post , at 12 (opinion of
Roberts, C. J.) (hereinafter the dissent). It is not that the
dissent exaggerates violence in the home; we recognize that
domestic abuse is a serious problem in the United States. See U. S.
Dept. of Justice, National Institute of Justice, P. Tjaden & N.
Thoennes, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequence
of Violence Against Women 25–26 (2000) (noting that over 20 million
women and 6 million men will, in the course of their lifetimes, be
the victims of intimate-partner abuse); U. S. Dept. of Health and
Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Costs of
Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States 19
(2003) (finding that nearly 5.3 million intimate partner
victimizations, which result in close to 2 million injuries and
1300 deaths, occur among women in the United States each year); U.
S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crime Data
Brief, C. Rennison, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993–2001 (Feb.
2003) (noting that in 2001 intimate partner violence made up 20% of
violent crime against women); see also Becker, The Politics of
Women’s Wrongs and the Bill of “Rights”: A Bicentennial
Perspective, 59 U. Chi. L. Rev. 454, 507–508 (1992) (noting
that women may feel physical insecurity in their homes as a result
of abuse from domestic partners). But this case has no bearing on
the capacity of the police to protect domestic victims. The
dissent’s argument rests on the failure to distinguish two
different issues: when the police may enter without committing a
trespass, and when the police may enter to search for evidence. No
question has been raised, or reasonably could be, about the
authority of the police to enter a dwelling to protect a resident
from domestic violence; so long as they have good reason to believe
such a threat exists, it would be silly to suggest that the police
would commit a tort by entering, say, to give a complaining tenant
the opportunity to collect belongings and get out safely, or to
determine whether violence (or threat of violence) has just
occurred or is about to (or soon will) occur, however much a spouse
or other co-tenant objected. (And since the police would then be
lawfully in the premises, there is no question that they could
seize any evidence in plain view or take further action supported
by any consequent probable cause, see Texas v. Brown, 460
U. S. 730 , 737–739 (1983) (plurality opinion).) Thus, the
question whether the police might lawfully enter over objection in
order to provide any protection that might be reasonable is easily
answered yes. See 4 LaFave §8.3(d), at 161 (“[E]ven when . . . two
persons quite clearly have equal rights in the place, as where two
individuals are sharing an apartment on an equal basis, there may
nonetheless sometimes exist a basis for giving greater recognition
to the interests of one over the other. . . . [W]here the defendant
has victimized the third-party . . . the emergency nature of the
situation is such that the third-party consent should validate a
warrantless search despite defendant’s objections” (internal
quotation marks omitted; third omission in original)). The
undoubted right of the police to enter in order to protect a
victim, however, has nothing to do with the question in this case,
whether a search with the consent of one co-tenant is good against
another, standing at the door and expressly refusing
consent.[ Footnote 7 ] None of the cases cited by the
dissent support its improbable view that recognizing limits on
merely evidentiary searches would compromise the capacity to
protect a fearful occupant. In the circumstances of those cases,
there is no danger that the fearful occupant will be kept behind
the closed door of the house simply because the abusive tenant
refuses to consent to a search. See United States v. Donlin, 982 F. 2d 31, 32 (CA1 1992) (victimized individual
was already outside of her apartment when police arrived and, for
all intents and purposes, within the protective custody of law
enforcement officers); United States v. Hendrix, 595 F. 2d 883, 885–886 (CADC 1979) (per curiam) (even if
the consent of the threatened co-occupant did not justify a
warrantless search, the police entry was nevertheless allowable on
exigent-circumstances grounds); People v. Sanders, 904 P. 2d 1311, 1313–1315 (Colo. 1995)
(victimized individual gave her consent-to-search away from her
home and was not present at the time of the police visit;
alternatively, exigent circumstances existed to satisfy the
warrantless exception); Brandon v. State, 778 P.
2d 221, 223–224 (Alaska App. 1989) (victimized individual consented
away from her home and was not present at the time of the police
visit); United States v. Davis, 290 F. 3d 1239,
1241 (CA10 2002) (immediate harm extinguished after husband
“order[ed]” wife out of the home). The dissent’s red herring aside,
we know, of course, that alternatives to disputed consent will not
always open the door to search for evidence that the police suspect
is inside. The consenting tenant may simply not disclose enough
information, or information factual enough, to add up to a showing
of probable cause, and there may be no exigency to justify fast
action. But nothing in social custom or its reflection in private
law argues for placing a higher value on delving into private
premises to search for evidence in the face of disputed consent,
than on requiring clear justification before the government
searches private living quarters over a resident’s objection. We
therefore hold that a warrantless search of a shared dwelling for
evidence over the express refusal of consent by a physically
present resident cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the
basis of consent given to the police by another resident.[ Footnote 8 ] E There are two loose
ends, the first being the explanation given in Matlock for
the constitutional sufficiency of a co-tenant’s consent to enter
and search: it “rests … on mutual use of the property by persons
generally having joint access or control for most purposes, so that
it is reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has
the right to permit the inspection in his own right … .” 415
U. S., at 171, n. 7. If Matlock ’s co-tenant is giving
permission “in his own right,” how can his “own right” be
eliminated by another tenant’s objection? The answer appears in the
very footnote from which the quoted statement is taken: the “right”
to admit the police to which Matlock refers is not an
enduring and enforceable ownership right as understood by the
private law of property, but is instead the authority recognized by
customary social usage as having a substantial bearing on Fourth
Amendment reasonableness in specific circumstances. Thus, to ask
whether the consenting tenant has the right to admit the police
when a physically present fellow tenant objects is not to question
whether some property right may be divested by the mere objection
of another. It is, rather, the question whether customary social
understanding accords the consenting tenant authority powerful
enough to prevail over the co-tenant’s objection. The Matlock Court did not purport to answer this question, a
point made clear by another statement (which the dissent does not
quote): the Court described the co-tenant’s consent as good against
“the absent, nonconsenting” resident.” Id. , at
170. The second loose end
is the significance of Matlock and Rodriguez after today’s decision. Although the Matlock defendant was
not present with the opportunity to object, he was in a squad car
not far away; the Rodriguez defendant was actually asleep
in the apartment, and the police might have roused him with a knock
on the door before they entered with only the consent of an
apparent co-tenant. If those cases are not to be undercut by
today’s holding, we have to admit that we are drawing a fine line;
if a potential defendant with self-interest in objecting is in fact
at the door and objects, the co-tenant’s permission does not
suffice for a reasonable search, whereas the potential objector,
nearby but not invited to take part in the threshold colloquy,
loses out. This is the line we draw, and we
think the formalism is justified. So long as there is no evidence
that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from
the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection, there
is practical value in the simple clarity of complementary rules,
one recognizing the co-tenant’s permission when there is no fellow
occupant on hand, the other according dispositive weight to the
fellow occupant’s contrary indication when he expresses it. For the
very reason that Rodriguez held it would be unjustifiably
impractical to require the police to take affirmative steps to
confirm the actual authority of a consenting individual whose
authority was apparent, we think it would needlessly limit the
capacity of the police to respond to ostensibly legitimate
opportunities in the field if we were to hold that reasonableness
required the police to take affirmative steps to find a potentially
objecting co-tenant before acting on the permission they had
already received. There is no ready reason to believe that efforts
to invite a refusal would make a difference in many cases, whereas
every co-tenant consent case would turn into a test about the
adequacy of the police’s efforts to consult with a potential
objector. Better to accept the formalism of distinguishing Matlock from this case than to impose a requirement,
time-consuming in the field and in the courtroom, with no apparent
systemic justification. The pragmatic decision to accept the
simplicity of this line is, moreover, supported by the substantial
number of instances in which suspects who are asked for permission
to search actually consent,[ Footnote 9 ] albeit imprudently, a fact that undercuts any
argument that the police should try to locate a suspected
inhabitant because his denial of consent would be a foregone
conclusion. III This case invites a
straightforward application of the rule that a physically present
inhabitant’s express refusal of consent to a police search is
dispositive as to him, regardless of the consent of a fellow
occupant. Scott Randolph’s refusal is clear, and nothing in the
record justifies the search on grounds independent of Janet
Randolph’s consent. The State does not argue that she gave any
indication to the police of a need for protection inside the house
that might have justified entry into the portion of the premises
where the police found the powdery straw (which, if lawfully
seized, could have been used when attempting to establish probable
cause for the warrant issued later). Nor does the State claim that
the entry and search should be upheld under the rubric of exigent
circumstances, owing to some apprehension by the police officers
that Scott Randolph would destroy evidence of drug use before any
warrant could be obtained. The judgment of the
Supreme Court of Georgia is therefore affirmed. It is so ordered. Justice Alito took no
part in the consideration or decision of this case. Footnote 1 All four Courts of Appeals to
have considered this question have concluded that consent remains
effective in the face of an express objection. See United
States v. Morning, 64 F. 3d 531, 533–536 (CA9
1995); United States v. Donlin, 982 F. 2d
31, 33 (CA1 1992); United States v. Hendrix, 595
F. 2d 883, 885 (CADC 1979) (per curiam); United
States v. Sumlin, 567 F. 2d 684, 687–688 (CA6
1977). Of the state courts that have addressed the question, the
majority have reached that conclusion as well. See, e.g., Love v. State, 355 Ark. 334, 342, 138 S. W.
3d 676, 680 (2003); Laramie v. Hysong, 808
P. 2d 199, 203–205 (Wyo. 1991); but cf. State v. Leach, 113 Wash. 2d 735, 744, 782 P. 2d 1035, 1040
(1989) (en banc) (requiring consent of all present
co-occupants). Footnote 2 Mindful of the multiplicity of
living arrangements, we vary the terms used to describe residential
co-occupancies. In so doing we do not mean, however, to suggest
that the rule to be applied to them is similarly varied. Footnote 3 Cf. Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385 , 393
(1978) (acknowledging the right of police to respond to emergency
situations “threatening life or limb” and indicating that police
may conduct a warrantless search provided that the search is
“ ‘strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justify its
initiation’ ”). Footnote 4 In the dissent’s view, the
centuries of special protection for the privacy of the home are
over. The principal dissent equates inviting the police into a
co-tenant’s home over his contemporaneous objection with reporting
a secret, post , at 13–14 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.),
and the emphasis it places on the false equation suggests a
deliberate intent to devalue the importance of the privacy of a
dwelling place. The same attitude that privacy of a dwelling is not
special underlies the dissent’s easy assumption that privacy shared
with another individual is privacy waived for all purposes
including warrantless searches by the police. Post , at
5. Footnote 5 A generalized interest in
expedient law enforcement cannot, without more, justify a
warrantless search. See Mincey, supra , at 393
(“[T]he privacy of a person’s home and property may not be totally
sacrificed in the name of maximum simplicity in enforcement of the
criminal law”); Coolidge v . New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 , 481 (1971) (“The
warrant requirement … is not an inconvenience to be somehow
‘weighed’ against the claims of police efficiency”). Footnote 6 Sometimes, of course, the very
exchange of information like this in front of the objecting
inhabitant may render consent irrelevant by creating an exigency
that justifies immediate action on the police’s part; if the
objecting tenant cannot be incapacitated from destroying easily
disposable evidence during the time required to get a
warrant , see Illinois v. McArthur , 531 U. S. 326 ,
331–332 (2001) (denying suspect access to his trailer home while
police applied for a search warrant), a fairly perceived need to
act on the spot to preserve evidence may justify entry and search
under the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant
requirement, cf. Schmerber v. California , 384 U. S. 757 ,
770–771 (1966) (warrantless search permitted when “the delay
necessary to obtain a warrant … threatened the destruction of
evidence” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Additional exigent circumstances might
justify warrantless searches. See, e.g., Warden, Md.
Penitentiary v. Hayden , 387 U. S. 294 , 298
(1967) (hot pursuit); Chimel v. California , 395 U. S. 752 (1969) (protecting the safety of the police officers); Michigan v. Tyler , 436 U. S. 499 (1978)
(imminent destruction to building); Johnson v. United
States , 333 U.
S. 10 , 15 (1948) (likelihood that suspect will imminently
flee). Footnote
7 We understand the
possibility that a battered individual will be afraid to express
fear candidly, but this does not seem to be a reason to think such
a person would invite the police into the dwelling to search for
evidence against another. Hence, if a rule crediting consent over
denial of consent were built on hoping to protect household
victims, it would distort the Fourth Amendment with little, if any,
constructive effect on domestic abuse
investigations. Footnote
8 The dissent is
critical that our holding does not pass upon the constitutionality
of such a search as to a third tenant against whom the government
wishes to use evidence seized after a search with consent of one
co-tenant subject to the contemporaneous objection of another, post , at 11. We decide the case before us, not a different
one. Footnote
9 See 4 LaFave §8.1, at
4 (“The so-called consent search is frequently relied upon by
police as a means of investigating suspected criminal conduct”
(footnote omitted)); Strauss, Reconstructing Consent, 92 J. Crim.
L. & C. 211, 214 (2001–2002) (“Although precise figures
detailing the number of searches conducted pursuant to consent are
not—and probably can never be—available, there is no dispute that
these type of searches affect tens of thousands, if not hundreds of
thousands, of people every year” (footnote
omitted)). BREYER, J., CONCURRING GEORGIA V. RANDOLPH 547 U. S. ____ (2006) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 04-1067 GEORGIA, PETITIONER v. SCOTT FITZ
RANDOLPH

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
georgia

															[March 22, 2006]

															   Justice Breyer, concurring.

															   If Fourth Amendment law forced us
to choose between two bright-line rules, (1) a rule that always
found one tenant’s consent sufficient to justify a search without a
warrant and (2) a rule that never did, I believe we should choose
the first. That is because, as The Chief Justice’s dissent points
out, a rule permitting such searches can serve important law
enforcement needs (for example, in domestic abuse cases) and the
consenting party’s joint tenancy diminishes the objecting party’s
reasonable expectation of privacy.

															   But the Fourth Amendment does not insist upon
bright-line rules. Rather, it recognizes that no single set of
legal rules can capture the ever changing complexity of human life.
It consequently uses the general terms “unreasonable searches and
seizures.” And this Court has continuously emphasized that
“[r]easonableness … is measured … by examining the totality of the
circumstances.” Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U. S. 33 , 39 (1996);
see also Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U. S. 119 , 136
(2000) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in
part); Florida v. Bostick, 501 U. S. 429 , 439
(1991); Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U. S. 567 , 572–573
(1988); Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491 , 506
(1983) (plurality opinion).

															   The circumstances here include the following:
The search at issue was a search solely for evidence. The objecting
party was present and made his objection known clearly and directly
to the officers seeking to enter the house. The officers did not
justify their search on grounds of possible evidence destruction.
Cf. Thornton v. United States, 541 U. S. 615 , 620–622
(2004); Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’
Assn., 489 U.
S. 602 , 623 (1989); Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757 ,
770–771 (1966). And, as far as the record reveals, the officers
might easily have secured the premises and sought a warrant
permitting them to enter. See Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U. S. 326 (2001).
Thus, the “totality of the circumstances” present here do not
suffice to justify abandoning the Fourth Amendment’s traditional
hostility to police entry into a home without a warrant.

															   I stress the totality of the circumstances,
however, because, were the circumstances to change significantly,
so should the result. The Court’s opinion does not apply where the
objector is not present “and object[ing].” Ante , at
17.

															   Moreover, the risk of an ongoing crime or
other exigent circumstance can make a critical difference.
Consider, for example, instances of domestic abuse. See ante , at 13. “Family disturbance calls . . . constitute
the largest single category of calls received by police departments
each year.” Mederer & Gelles, Compassion or Control:
Intervention in Cases of Wife Abuse, 4 Journal of Interpersonal
Violence 25 (Mar. 1989) (emphasis deleted); see also, e.g., Office of the Attorney General, California Criminal
Justice Statistics Center, Domestic Violence Related Calls for
Assistance, 1987–2003, County by Year,
http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/publications/misc/dvsr/tabs/ 8703.pdf (as
visited Mar. 1, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file)
(providing data showing that California police received an average
of 207,848 domestic violence related calls each year); Cessato,
Defenders Against Domestic Abuse, Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2002,
p. B8 (“In the District [of Columbia], police report that
almost half of roughly 39,000 violent crime calls received in 2000
involved domestic violence”); Zorza, Women Battering: High Costs
and the State of the Law, Clearinghouse Review, p. 385
(Special Issue 1994) (“One-third of all police time is spent
responding to domestic disturbance calls”). And, law enforcement
officers must be able to respond effectively when confronted with
the possibility of abuse.

															   If a possible abuse victim invites a
responding officer to enter a home or consents to the officer’s
entry request, that invitation (or consent) itself could reflect
the victim’s fear about being left alone with an abuser. It could
also indicate the availability of evidence, in the form of an
immediate willingness to speak, that might not otherwise exist. In
that context, an invitation (or consent) would provide a special
reason for immediate, rather than later, police entry. And, entry
following invitation or consent by one party ordinarily would be
reasonable even in the face of direct objection by the other. That
being so, contrary to the The Chief Justice’s suggestion, post , at 13, today’s decision will not adversely affect
ordinary law enforcement practices.

															   Given the case-specific nature of the Court’s
holding, and with these understandings, I join the Court’s holding
and its opinion. STEVENS, J., CONCURRING GEORGIA V. RANDOLPH 547 U. S. ____ (2006) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 04-1067 GEORGIA, PETITIONER v. SCOTT FITZ
RANDOLPH

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
georgia

															[March 22, 2006]

															   Justice Stevens, concurring.

															   The study of history for the
purpose of ascertaining the original understanding of
constitutional provisions is much like the study of legislative
history for the purpose of ascertaining the intent of the lawmakers
who enact statutes. In both situations the facts uncovered by the
study are usually relevant but not necessarily dispositive. This
case illustrates why even the most dedicated adherent to an
approach to constitutional interpretation that places primary
reliance on the search for original understanding would recognize
the relevance of changes in our society.

															   At least since 1604 it has been settled that
in the absence of exigent circumstances, a government agent has no
right to enter a “house” or “castle” unless authorized to do so by
a valid warrant. See Semayne’s Case , 5 Co. Rep. 91a, 77
Eng. Rep. 194 (K.B.). Every occupant of the home has a
right—protected by the common law for centuries and by the Fourth
Amendment since 1791—to refuse entry. When an occupant gives his or
her consent to enter, he or she is waiving a valuable
constitutional right. To be sure that the waiver is voluntary, it
is sound practice—a practice some Justices of this Court thought
necessary to make the waiver voluntary[ Footnote 1 ]—for the officer to advise the occupant of that
right.[ Footnote 2 ] The issue in
this case relates to the content of the advice that the officer
should provide when met at the door by a man and a woman who are
apparently joint tenants or joint owners of the property.

															   In the 18th century, when the Fourth Amendment
was adopted, the advice would have been quite different from what
is appropriate today. Given the then-prevailing dramatic
differences between the property rights of the husband and the far
lesser rights of the wife, only the consent of the husband would
matter. Whether “the master of the house” consented or objected,
his decision would control. Thus if “original understanding” were
to govern the outcome of this case, the search was clearly invalid
because the husband did not consent. History, however, is not
dispositive because it is now clear, as a matter of constitutional
law, that the male and the female are equal partners. Reed v. Reed , 404
U. S. 71 (1971).

															   In today’s world the only advice that an
officer could properly give should make it clear that each of the
partners has a constitutional right that he or she may
independently assert or waive. Assuming that both spouses are
competent, neither one is a master possessing the power to override
the other’s constitutional right to deny entry to their castle.

															   With these observations, I join the Court’s
opinion. Footnote 1 See, e.g. , Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218 , 284–285
(1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting) (pointing out that it is hard to
comprehend “how a decision made without knowledge of available
alternatives can be treated as choice at all,” and arguing that
“[i]f consent to search means that a person has chosen to forego
his right to exclude the police from the place they seek to search,
it follows that his consent cannot be considered a meaningful
choice unless he knew that he could in fact exclude the
police”). Footnote 2 Such advice is surely preferable to an
officer’s expression of his or her desire to enter and to search in
words that may be construed either as a command or a question. See id. , at 275–276 (Douglas, J., dissenting) (noting that
“ ‘[u]nder many circumstances a reasonable person might read
an officer’s “May I” as the courteous expression of a demand backed
by force of law.’ ” (quoting Bustamonte v. Schneckloth , 448 F. 2d 669, 701 (CA9 1971))). ROBERTS, C. J., DISSENTING GEORGIA V. RANDOLPH 547 U. S. ____ (2006) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 04-1067 GEORGIA, PETITIONER v. SCOTT FITZ
RANDOLPH

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
georgia

															[March 22, 2006]

															   Chief Justice Roberts, with whom
Justice Scalia joins, dissenting.

															   The Court creates constitutional
law by surmising what is typical when a social guest encounters an
entirely atypical situation. The rule the majority fashions does
not implement the high office of the Fourth Amendment to protect
privacy, but instead provides protection on a random and
happenstance basis, protecting, for example, a co-occupant who
happens to be at the front door when the other occupant consents to
a search, but not one napping or watching television in the next
room. And the cost of affording such random protection is great, as
demonstrated by the recurring cases in which abused spouses seek to
authorize police entry into a home they share with a nonconsenting
abuser.

															   The correct approach to the question presented
is clearly mapped out in our precedents: The Fourth Amendment
protects privacy. If an individual shares information, papers, or places with another, he assumes the risk that the other
person will in turn share access to that information or those
papers or places with the government. And just as an
individual who has shared illegal plans or incriminating documents
with another cannot interpose an objection when that other person
turns the information over to the government, just because the
individual happens to be present at the time, so too someone who
shares a place with another cannot interpose an objection when that
person decides to grant access to the police, simply because the
objecting individual happens to be present.

															   A warrantless search is reasonable if police
obtain the voluntary consent of a person authorized to give it.
Co-occupants have “assumed the risk that one of their number might
permit [a] common area to be searched.” United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 , 171, n. 7 (1974).
Just as Mrs. Randolph could walk upstairs, come down, and turn her
husband’s cocaine straw over to the police, she can consent to
police entry and search of what is, after all, her home, too.

															I

															   In Illinois v. Rodriguez , 497 U. S. 177 (1990),
this Court stated that “[w]hat [a person] is assured by the Fourth
Amendment … is not that no government search of his house will
occur unless he consents; but that no such search will occur that
is ‘unreasonable.’ ” Id. , at 183. One element that
can make a warrantless government search of a home
“ ‘reasonable’ ” is voluntary consent. Id. , at
184; Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218 , 219
(1973). Proof of voluntary consent “is not limited to proof that
consent was given by the defendant,” but the government “may show
that permission to search was obtained from a third party who
possessed common authority over or other sufficient relationship to
the premises.” Matlock , supra , at 171. Today’s
opinion creates an exception to this otherwise clear rule: A
third-party consent search is unreasonable, and therefore
constitutionally impermissible, if the co-occupant against whom
evidence is obtained was present and objected to the entry and
search.

															   This exception is based on what
the majority describes as “widely shared social expectations” that
“when people living together disagree over the use of their common
quarters, a resolution must come through voluntary accommodation.” Ante , at 6, 9. But this fundamental predicate to the
majority’s analysis gets us nowhere: Does the objecting cotenant
accede to the consenting cotenant’s wishes, or the other way
around? The majority’s assumption about voluntary accommodation
simply leads to the common stalemate of two gentlemen insisting
that the other enter a room first.

															   Nevertheless, the majority is confident in
assuming—confident enough to incorporate its assumption into the
Constitution—that an invited social guest who arrives at the door
of a shared residence, and is greeted by a disagreeable co-occupant
shouting “ ‘stay out,’ ” would simply go away. Ante , at 8. The Court observes that “no sensible person
would go inside under those conditions,” ante , at 8–9, and
concludes from this that the inviting co-occupant has no
“authority” to insist on getting her way over the wishes of her
co-occupant, ante , at 10. But it seems equally accurate to
say—based on the majority’s conclusion that one does not have a
right to prevail over the express wishes of his co-occupant—that
the objector has no “authority” to insist on getting his way over his co-occupant’s wish that her guest be admitted.

															   The fact is that a wide variety of differing
social situations can readily be imagined, giving rise to quite
different social expectations. A relative or good friend of one of
two feuding roommates might well enter the apartment over the
objection of the other roommate. The reason the invitee appeared at
the door also affects expectations: A guest who came to celebrate
an occupant’s birthday, or one who had traveled some distance for a
particular reason, might not readily turn away simply because of a
roommate’s objection. The nature of the place itself is also
pertinent: Invitees may react one way if the feuding roommates
share one room, differently if there are common areas from which
the objecting roommate could readily be expected to absent himself.
Altering the numbers might well change the social expectations:
Invitees might enter if two of three co-occupants encourage them to
do so, over one dissenter.

															   The possible scenarios are limitless, and
slight variations in the fact pattern yield vastly different
expectations about whether the invitee might be expected to enter
or to go away. Such shifting expectations are not a promising
foundation on which to ground a constitutional rule, particularly
because the majority has no support for its basic assumption—that
an invited guest encountering two disagreeing co-occupants would
flee—beyond a hunch about how people would typically act in an
atypical situation.

															   And in fact the Court has not looked to such
expectations to decide questions of consent under the Fourth
Amendment, but only to determine when a search has occurred and
whether a particular person has standing to object to a search. For
these latter inquiries, we ask whether a person has a subjective
expectation of privacy in a particular place, and whether “the
expectation [is] one that society is prepared to recognize as
‘reasonable.’ ” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 ,
361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring); see Minnesota v. Olson, 495
U. S. 91 , 95–96, 100 (1990) (extending Katz test to
standing inquiry). But the social expectations concept has not been
applied to all questions arising under the Fourth Amendment, least
of all issues of consent. A criminal might have a strong
expectation that his longtime confidant will not allow the
government to listen to their private conversations, but however
profound his shock might be upon betrayal, government monitoring
with the confidant’s consent is reasonable under the Fourth
Amendment. See United States v. White , 401 U. S. 745 , 752
(1971).

															   The majority suggests that “widely shared
social expectations” are a “constant element in assessing Fourth
Amendment reasonableness,” ante , at 6 (citing Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128 , 144,
n. 12 (1978)), but that is not the case; the Fourth Amendment
precedents the majority cites refer instead to a “legitimate
expectation of privacy .” Ibid. (emphasis added;
internal quotation marks omitted). Whatever social expectation the
majority seeks to protect, it is not one of privacy. The very
predicate giving rise to the question in cases of shared
information, papers, containers, or places is that privacy has been
shared with another. Our common social expectations may well be
that the other person will not, in turn, share what we have shared
with them with another—including the police—but that is the risk we
take in sharing. If two friends share a locker and one keeps
contraband inside, he might trust that his friend will not let
others look inside. But by sharing private space, privacy has
“already been frustrated” with respect to the lockermate. United States v. Jacobsen , 466 U. S. 109 , 117
(1984). If two roommates share a computer and one keeps pirated
software on a shared drive, he might assume that his roommate will
not inform the government. But that person has given up his privacy
with respect to his roommate by saving the software on their shared
computer.

															   A wide variety of often subtle social
conventions may shape expectations about how we act when another
shares with us what is otherwise private, and those conventions go
by a variety of labels—courtesy, good manners, custom, protocol,
even honor among thieves. The Constitution, however, protects not
these but privacy, and once privacy has been shared, the shared
information, documents, or places remain private only at the
discretion of the confidant.

															II

															   Our cases reflect this
understanding. In United States v. White , we held
that one party to a conversation can consent to government
eavesdropping, and statements made by the other party will be
admissible at trial. 401 U. S., at 752. This rule is based on
privacy: “Inescapably, one contemplating illegal activities must
realize and risk that his companions may be reporting to the
police… . [I]f he has no doubts, or allays them, or risks what
doubt he has, the risk is his.” Ibid. The Court has applied this
same analysis to objects and places as well. In Frazier v. Cupp, 394
U. S. 731 (1969), a duffel bag “was being used jointly” by two
cousins. Id. , at 740. The Court held that the consent of
one was effective to result in the seizure of evidence used against
both: “[I]n allowing [his cousin] to use the bag and in leaving it
in his house, [the defendant] must be taken to have assumed the
risk that [his cousin] would allow someone else to look inside.” Ibid. As the Court explained in United
States v. Jacobsen , supra: “It is well settled that when an individual
reveals private information to another, he assumes the risk that
his confidant will reveal that information to the authorities, and
if that occurs the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit governmental
use of that information. Once frustration of the original
expectation of privacy occurs, the Fourth Amendment does not
prohibit governmental use of the now nonprivate information: ‘This
Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not
prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and
conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information
is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a
limited purpose and the confidence placed in a third party will not
be betrayed.’ ” Id. , at 117 (quoting United
States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435 , 443
(1976)).

															   The same analysis applies to the
question whether our privacy can be compromised by those with whom
we share common living space. If a person keeps contraband in
common areas of his home, he runs the risk that his co-occupants
will deliver the contraband to the police. In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971),
Mrs. Coolidge retrieved four of her husband’s guns and the clothes
he was wearing the previous night and handed them over to police.
We held that these items were properly admitted at trial because
“when Mrs. Coolidge of her own accord produced the guns and clothes
for inspection, … it was not incumbent on the police to stop her or
avert their eyes.” Id. , at 489.

															   Even in our most private relationships, our
observable actions and possessions are private at the discretion of
those around us. A husband can request that his wife not tell a
jury about contraband that she observed in their home or illegal
activity to which she bore witness, but it is she who decides
whether to invoke the testimonial marital privilege. Trammel v. United States, 445 U. S. 40 , 53 (1980).
In Trammel , we noted that the former rule prohibiting a
wife from testifying about her husband’s observable wrongdoing at
his say so “goes far beyond making ‘every man’s house his castle,’
and permits a person to convert his house into ‘a den of
thieves.’ ” Id. , at 51–52 (quoting 5 J. Bentham,
Rationale of Judicial Evidence 340 (1827)).

															   There is no basis for evaluating physical
searches of shared space in a manner different from how we
evaluated the privacy interests in the foregoing cases, and in fact
the Court has proceeded along the same lines in considering such
searches. In Matlock , police arrested the defendant in the
front yard of a house and placed him in a squad car, and then
obtained permission from Mrs. Graff to search a shared bedroom for
evidence of Matlock’s bank robbery. 415 U. S., at 166. Police
certainly could have assumed that Matlock would have objected were
he consulted as he sat handcuffed in the squad car outside. And in Rodriguez , where Miss Fischer offered to facilitate the
arrest of her sleeping boyfriend by admitting police into an
apartment she apparently shared with him, 497 U. S., at 179, police
might have noted that this entry was undoubtedly contrary to
Rodriguez’s social expectations. Yet both of these searches were
reasonable under the Fourth Amendment because Mrs. Graff had
authority, and Miss Fischer apparent authority, to admit others
into areas over which they exercised control, despite the almost
certain wishes of their present co-occupants.

															   The common thread in our decisions upholding
searches conducted pursuant to third-party consent is an
understanding that a person “assume[s] the risk” that those who
have access to and control over his shared property might consent
to a search. Matlock , 415 U. S., at 171, n. 7. In Matlock , we explained that this assumption of risk is
derived from a third party’s “joint access or control for most
purposes” of shared property. Ibid. And we concluded that
shared use of property makes it “reasonable to recognize that any
of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his
own right.” Ibid. In this sense, the risk assumed by a joint
occupant is comparable to the risk assumed by one who reveals
private information to another. If a person has incriminating
information, he can keep it private in the face of a request from
police to share it, because he has that right under the Fifth
Amendment. If a person occupies a house with incriminating
information in it, he can keep that information private in the face
of a request from police to search the house, because he has that
right under the Fourth Amendment. But if he shares the
information—or the house—with another, that other can grant access
to the police in each instance.[ Footnote 1 ]

															   To the extent a person wants to ensure that
his possessions will be subject to a consent search only due to his own consent, he is free to place these items in an area
over which others do not share access and control, be it a
private room or a locked suitcase under a bed. Mr. Randolph
acknowledged this distinction in his motion to suppress, where he
differentiated his law office from the rest of the Randolph house
by describing it as an area that “was solely in his control and
dominion.” App. 3. As to a “common area,” however, co-occupants
with “joint access or control” may consent to an entry and search. Matlock , supra, at 171, n. 7.

															   By emphasizing the objector’s presence and
noting an occupant’s understanding that obnoxious guests might “be
admitted in [one’s] absence,” ante , at 7, the majority
appears to resurrect an agency theory of consent suggested in our
early cases. See Stoner v. California , 376 U. S. 483 , 489
(1964) (stating that a hotel clerk could not consent to a search of
a guest’s room because the guest had not waived his rights “by word
or deed, either directly or through an agent”); Chapman v. United States , 365 U. S. 610 , 616–617
(1961). This agency theory is belied by the facts of Matlock and Rodriguez —both defendants were
present but simply not asked for consent—and the Court made clear
in those cases that a co-occupant’s authority to consent rested not
on an absent occupant’s delegation of choice to an agent, but on
the consenting co-occupant’s “joint access or control” of the
property. Matlock , supra , at 171, n. 7; see Rodriguez , supra , at 181; United States v. McAlpine , 919 F. 2d 1461, 1464, n. 2 (CA10
1990) (“[A]gency analysis [was] put to rest by the Supreme Court’s
reasoning in Matlock ”).

															   The law acknowledges that although we might
not expect our friends and family to admit the government into
common areas, sharing space entails risk. A person assumes the risk
that his co-occupants—just as they might report his illegal
activity or deliver his contraband to the government—might consent
to a search of areas over which they have access and control. See United States v. Karo, 468 U. S. 705 , 726
(1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in
judgment) (finding it a “relatively easy case … when two persons
share identical, overlapping privacy interests in a particular
place, container, or conversation. Here both share the
power to surrender each other’s privacy to a third party”).

															III

															   The majority states its rule as
follows: “[A] warrantless search of a shared dwelling for evidence
over the express refusal of consent by a physically present
resident cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the basis
of consent given to the police by another resident.” Ante ,
at 15–16.

															   Just as the source of the
majority’s rule is not privacy, so too the interest it protects
cannot reasonably be described as such. That interest is not
protected if a co-owner happens to be absent when the police
arrive, in the backyard gardening, asleep in the next room, or
listening to music through earphones so that only his co-occupant
hears the knock on the door. That the rule is so random in its
application confirms that it bears no real relation to the privacy
protected by the Fourth Amendment. What the majority’s rule
protects is not so much privacy as the good luck of a co-owner who
just happens to be present at the door when the police arrive.
Usually when the development of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence
leads to such arbitrary lines, we take it as a signal that the
rules need to be rethought. See California v. Acevedo, 500 U. S. 565 , 574, 580
(1991). We should not embrace a rule at the outset that its sponsors appreciate will result in drawing fine,
formalistic lines. See ante , at 17.

															   Rather than draw such random and happenstance
lines—and pretend that the Constitution decreed them—the more
reasonable approach is to adopt a rule acknowledging that shared
living space entails a limited yielding of privacy to others, and
that the law historically permits those to whom we have yielded our
privacy to in turn cooperate with the government. Such a rule flows
more naturally from our cases concerning Fourth Amendment
reasonableness and is logically grounded in the concept of privacy
underlying that Amendment.

															   The scope of the majority’s rule is not only
arbitrary but obscure as well. The majority repeats several times
that a present co-occupant’s refusal to permit entry renders the
search unreasonable and invalid “as to him.” Ante , at 1,
15–16, 18. This implies entry and search would be reasonable “as
to” someone else, presumably the consenting co-occupant and any
other absent co-occupants. The normal Fourth Amendment rule is that
items discovered in plain view are admissible if the officers were
legitimately on the premises; if the entry and search were
reasonable “as to” Mrs. Randolph, based on her consent, it is not
clear why the cocaine straw should not be admissible “as to” Mr.
Randolph, as discovered in plain view during a legitimate search
“as to” Mrs. Randolph. The majority’s differentiation between entry
focused on discovering whether domestic violence has occurred (and
the consequent authority to seize items in plain view), and entry
focused on searching for evidence of other crime, is equally
puzzling. See ante , at 13–14. This Court has rejected
subjective motivations of police officers in assessing Fourth
Amendment questions, see Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806 ,
812–813 (1996), with good reason: The police do not need a
particular reason to ask for consent to search, whether for signs
of domestic violence or evidence of drug possession.

															   While the majority’s rule protects something
random, its consequences are particularly severe. The question
presented often arises when innocent cotenants seek to disassociate
or protect themselves from ongoing criminal activity. See, e.g., United States v. Hendrix , 595
F. 2d 883, 884 (CADC 1979) (wife asked police “to get her baby
and take [a] sawed-off shotgun out of her house”); People v. Cosme , 48 N. Y. 2d 286, 288–289, 293, 397
N. E. 2d 1319, 1320, 1323 (1979) (woman asked police to remove
cocaine and a gun from a shared closet); United States v. Botsch , 364 F. 2d 542, 547 (CA2 1966). Under the
majority’s rule, there will be many cases in which a consenting
co-occupant’s wish to have the police enter is overridden by an
objection from another present co-occupant. What does the majority
imagine will happen, in a case in which the consenting co-occupant
is concerned about the other’s criminal activity, once the door
clicks shut? The objecting co-occupant may pause briefly to decide
whether to destroy any evidence of wrongdoing or to inflict
retribution on the consenting co-occupant first, but there can be
little doubt that he will attend to both in short order. It is no
answer to say that the consenting co-occupant can depart with the
police; remember that it is her home, too, and the other
co-occupant’s very presence, which allowed him to object, may also
prevent the consenting co-occupant from doing more than urging the
police to enter.

															   Perhaps the most serious consequence of the
majority’s rule is its operation in domestic abuse situations, a
context in which the present question often arises. See Rodriguez , 497 U. S., at 179; United States v. Donlin , 982 F. 2d 31 (CA1 1992); Hendrix , supra; People v. Sanders , 904 P. 2d 1311
(Colo. 1995) (en banc); Brandon v. State , 778
P. 2d 221 (Alaska App. 1989). While people living together
might typically be accommodating to the wishes of their cotenants,
requests for police assistance may well come from coinhabitants who
are having a disagreement. The Court concludes that because “no
sensible person would go inside” in the face of disputed consent, ante , at 8–9, and the consenting cotenant thus has “no
recognized authority” to insist on the guest’s admission, ante , at 10, a “police officer [has] no better claim to
reasonableness in entering than the officer would have in the
absence of any consent at all,” ibid . But the police
officer’s superior claim to enter is obvious: Mrs. Randolph did not
invite the police to join her for dessert and coffee; the officer’s
precise purpose in knocking on the door was to assist with a
dispute between the Randolphs—one in which Mrs. Randolph felt the
need for the protective presence of the police. The majority’s rule
apparently forbids police from entering to assist with a domestic
dispute if the abuser whose behavior prompted the request for
police assistance objects.[ Footnote
2 ]

															   The majority acknowledges these concerns, but
dismisses them on the ground that its rule can be expected to give
rise to exigent situations, and police can then rely on an exigent
circumstances exception to justify entry. Ante , at 12,
n. 6. This is a strange way to justify a rule, and the fact
that alternative justifications for entry might arise does not show
that entry pursuant to consent is unreasonable. In addition, it is
far from clear that an exception for emergency entries suffices to
protect the safety of occupants in domestic disputes. See, e.g., United States v. Davis , 290
F. 3d 1239, 1240–1241 (CA10 2002) (finding no exigent
circumstances justifying entry when police responded to a report of
domestic abuse, officers heard no noise upon arrival, defendant
told officers that his wife was out of town, and wife then appeared
at the door seemingly unharmed but resisted husband’s efforts to
close the door).

															   Rather than give effect to a consenting
spouse’s authority to permit entry into her house to avoid such
situations, the majority again alters established Fourth Amendment
rules to defend giving veto power to the objecting spouse. In
response to the concern that police might be turned away under its
rule before entry can be justified based on exigency, the majority
creates a new rule: A “good reason” to enter, coupled with one
occupant’s consent, will ensure that a police officer is “lawfully
in the premises.” Ante , at 13, 14. As support for this
“consent plus a good reason” rule, the majority cites a treatise,
which itself refers only to emergency entries. Ante , at 14 (citing 4 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure
§8.3(d), p. 161 (4th ed. 2004)). For the sake of defending what it
concedes are fine, formalistic lines, the majority spins out an
entirely new framework for analyzing exigent circumstances. Police
may now enter with a “good reason” to believe that “violence (or
threat of violence) has just occurred or is about to (or soon will)
occur.” Ante , at 13–14. And apparently a key factor
allowing entry with a “good reason” short of exigency is the very
consent of one co-occupant the majority finds so inadequate in the
first place.

															   The majority’s analysis alters a great deal of
established Fourth Amendment law. The majority imports the concept
of “social expectations,” previously used only to determine when a
search has occurred and whether a particular person has standing to
object to a search, into questions of consent. Ante , at 6,
8. To determine whether entry and search are reasonable, the
majority considers a police officer’s subjective motive in asking
for consent, which we have otherwise refrained from doing in
assessing Fourth Amendment questions. Ante , at 13–14. And
the majority creates a new exception to the warrant requirement to
justify warrantless entry short of exigency in potential domestic
abuse situations. Ibid. Considering the majority’s rule is solely
concerned with protecting a person who happens to be present at the
door when a police officer asks his co-occupant for consent to
search, but not one who is asleep in the next room or in the
backyard gardening, the majority has taken a great deal of pain in
altering Fourth Amendment doctrine, for precious little (if any)
gain in privacy. Perhaps one day, as the consequences of the
majority’s analytic approach become clearer, today’s opinion will
be treated the same way the majority treats our opinions in Matlock and Rodriguez —as a “loose end” to be tied
up. Ante , at 17.

															   One of the concurring opinions states that if
it had to choose between a rule that a cotenant’s consent was valid
or a rule that it was not, it would choose the former. Ante , at 1 (opinion of Breyer, J.). The concurrence
advises, however, that “no single set of legal rules can capture
the ever changing complexity of human life,” ibid. , and
joins what becomes the majority opinion, “[g]iven the case-specific
nature of the Court’s holding,” ante , at 3. What the
majority establishes, in its own terms, is “ the rule that
a physically present inhabitant’s express refusal of consent to a
police search is dispositive as to him, regardless of the
consent of a fellow occupant.” Ante , at 18 (emphases
added). The concurrence joins with the apparent “understandin[g]”
that the majority’s “rule” is not a rule at all, but simply a
“case-specific” holding. Ante , at 3 (opinion of
Breyer, J.). The end result is a complete lack of practical
guidance for the police in the field, let alone for the lower
courts.

															*  *  *

															   Our third-party consent cases
have recognized that a person who shares common areas with others
“assume[s] the risk that one of their number might permit the
common area to be searched.” Matlock , 415 U. S., at 171,
n. 7. The majority reminds us, in high tones, that a man’s
home is his castle, ante , at 10, but even under the
majority’s rule, it is not his castle if he happens to be absent,
asleep in the keep, or otherwise engaged when the constable arrives
at the gate. Then it is his co-owner’s castle. And, of course, it
is not his castle if he wants to consent to entry, but his co-owner
objects. Rather than constitutionalize such an arbitrary rule, we
should acknowledge that a decision to share a private place, like a
decision to share a secret or a confidential document, necessarily
entails the risk that those with whom we share may in turn choose
to share—for their own protection or for other reasons—with the
police.

															   I respectfully dissent. Footnote 1 The majority considers this comparison to be
a “false equation,” and even discerns “a deliberate intent to
devalue the importance of the privacy of a dwelling place.” Ante , at 10–11, n. 4. But the differences between the
majority and this dissent reduce to this: Under the majority’s
view, police may not enter and search when an objecting co-occupant
is present at the door , but they may do so when
he is asleep in the next room; under our view, the co-occupant’s
consent is effective in both cases. It seems a bit overwrought to
characterize the former approach as affording great protection to a
man in his castle, the latter as signaling that “the centuries of
special protection for the privacy of the home are over.” Ibid. The Court in United States v. Matlock , 415 U. S. 164 (1974), drew the same
comparison the majority faults today, see id. , at 171,
n. 7, and the “deliberate intent” the majority ascribes to
this dissent is apparently shared by all Courts of Appeals and the
great majority of State Supreme Courts to have considered the
question, see ante , at 4, n. 1.

															   The majority also mischaracterizes this
dissent as assuming that “privacy shared with another individual is
privacy waived for all purposes including warrantless searches by
the police.” Ante , at 11, n. 4. The point, of course,
is not that a person waives his privacy by sharing space with
others such that police may enter at will, but that sharing space
necessarily entails a limited yielding of privacy to the person
with whom the space is shared , such that the other person
shares authority to consent to a search of the shared space. See supra , at 2, 5–10. Footnote 2 In response to this concern, the majority
asserts that its rule applies “merely [to] evidentiary searches.” Ante , at 14. But the fundamental premise of the majority’s
argument is that an inviting co-occupant has “no recognized
authority” to “open the door” over a co-occupant’s objection. Ante , at 10; see also ante , at 1 (“[A] physically
present co-occupant’s stated refusal to permit entry prevails, rendering the warrantless search unreasonable and invalid
as to him” (emphasis added)); ante , at 8 (“[A] caller
standing at the door of shared premises would have no confidence …
to enter when a fellow tenant stood there saying ‘stay
out’ ” (emphasis added)); ante , at 10 (“[A] disputed
invitation, without more, gives a police officer no … claim to
reasonableness in entering ” (emphasis added)). The point
is that the majority’s rule transforms what may have begun as a
request for consent to conduct an evidentiary search into something
else altogether, by giving veto power over the consenting
co-occupant’s wishes to an occupant who would exclude the police
from entry . The majority would afford the now quite
vulnerable consenting co-occupant sufficient time to gather her
belongings and leave, see ante , at 13, apparently putting
to one side the fact that it is her castle, too. THOMAS, J., DISSENTING GEORGIA V. RANDOLPH 547 U. S. ____ (2006) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 04-1067 GEORGIA, PETITIONER v. SCOTT FITZ
RANDOLPH

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
georgia

															[March 22, 2006]

															   Justice Thomas, dissenting.

															   The Court has long recognized
that “[i]t is an act of responsible citizenship for individuals to
give whatever information they may have to aid in law enforcement.” Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U. S. 436 , 477–478
(1966). Consistent with this principle, the Court held in Coolidge v. New Hampshire , 403 U. S. 443 (1971),
that no Fourth Amendment search occurs where, as here, the spouse
of an accused voluntarily leads the police to potential evidence of
wrongdoing by the accused. Id ., at 486–490. Because Coolidge squarely controls this case, the Court need not
address whether police could permissibly have conducted a general
search of the Randolph home, based on Mrs. Randolph’s consent. I
respectfully dissent.

															   In the instant case, Mrs. Randolph told police
responding to a domestic dispute that respondent was using a
substantial quantity of cocaine. Upon police request, she consented
to a general search of her residence to investigate her statements.
However, as the Court’s recitation of the facts demonstrates, ante, at 2, the record is clear that no such general
search occurred. Instead, Sergeant Brett Murray asked Mrs. Randolph
where the cocaine was located, and she showed him to an upstairs
bedroom, where he saw the “piece of cut straw” on a dresser.
Corrected Tr. of Motion to Suppression Hearing in Case No.
2001R–699 (Super. Ct. Sumter Cty., Ga., Oct. 3, 2002), pp. 8–9.
Upon closer examination, Sergeant Murray observed white residue on
the straw, and concluded the straw had been used for ingesting
cocaine. Id. , at 8. He then collected the straw and the
residue as evidence. Id ., at 9.

															   Sergeant Murray’s entry into the Randolphs’
home at the invitation of Mrs. Randolph to be shown evidence of
respondent’s cocaine use does not constitute a Fourth Amendment
search. Under this Court’s precedents, only the action of an agent
of the government can constitute a search within the meaning of the
Fourth Amendment, because that Amendment “was intended as a
restraint upon the activities of sovereign authority , and
was not intended to be a limitation upon other than governmental
agencies.” Burdeau v. McDowell , 256 U. S. 465 , 475
(1921) (emphasis added). See also Coolidge , 403 U. S., at
487. Applying this principle in Coolidge , the Court held
that when a citizen leads police officers into a home shared with
her spouse to show them evidence relevant to their investigation
into a crime, that citizen is not acting as an agent of the police,
and thus no Fourth Amendment search has occurred. Id. , at
488–498. Review of the facts in Coolidge clearly demonstrates that it governs this case.
While the police interrogated Coolidge as part of their
investigation into a murder, two other officers were sent to his
house to speak with his wife. Id., at 485. During the
course of questioning Mrs. Coolidge, the police asked whether her
husband owned any guns. Id ., at 486. Mrs. Coolidge replied
in the affirmative, and offered to retrieve the weapons for the
police, apparently operating under the assumption that doing so
would help to exonerate her husband. Ibid . The police
accompanied Mrs. Coolidge to the bedroom to collect the guns, as
well as clothing that Mrs. Coolidge told them her husband had been
wearing the night of the murder. Ibid .

															   Before this Court, Coolidge argued that the
evidence of the guns and clothing should be suppressed as the
product of an unlawful search because Mrs. Coolidge was acting as
an “ ‘instrument,’ ” or agent, of the police by complying
with a “ ‘demand’ ” made by them. Id ., at 487.
The Court recognized that, had Mrs. Coolidge sought out the guns to
give to police wholly on her own initiative, “there can be no doubt
under existing law that the articles would later have been
admissible in evidence.” Ibid . That she did so in
cooperation with police pursuant to their request did not transform
her into their agent; after all, “it is no part of the policy
underlying the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to discourage
citizens from aiding to the utmost of their ability in the
apprehension of criminals.” Id., at 488. Because the
police were “acting normally and properly” when they asked about
any guns, and questioning Mrs. Coolidge about the clothing was
“logical and in no way coercive,” the Fourth Amendment did not
require police to “avert their eyes” when Mrs. Coolidge produced
the guns and clothes for inspection.[ Footnote 1 ] Id ., at 488–489.

															   This case is indistinguishable from Coolidge , compelling the conclusion that Mrs. Randolph was
not acting as an agent of the police when she admitted Sergeant
Murray into her home and led him to the incriminating
evidence.[ Footnote 2 ] Just as
Mrs. Coolidge could, of her own accord, have offered her husband’s
weapons and clothing to the police without implicating the Fourth
Amendment, so too could Mrs. Randolph have simply retrieved the
straw from the house and given it to Sergeant Murray. Indeed, the
majority appears to concede as much. Ante, at 11-12 (“The
co-tenant acting on his own initiative may be able to deliver
evidence to the police, Coolidge , supra , at
487–489 … , and can tell the police what he knows, for
use before a magistrate in getting a warrant”). Drawing a
constitutionally significant distinction between what occurred here
and Mrs. Randolph’s independent production of the relevant evidence
is both inconsistent with Coolidge and unduly
formalistic.[ Footnote 3 ]

															   Accordingly, the trial court appropriately
denied respondent’s motion to suppress the evidence Mrs. Randolph
provided to the police and the evidence obtained as a result of the
consequent search warrant. I would therefore reverse the judgment
of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Footnote 1 Although the Court has described Coolidge as a “third-party consent” case, United
States v. Matlock , 415 U. S. 164 , 171
(1974), the Court’s opinion, by its own terms, does not rest on its
conception of Mrs. Coolidge’s authority to consent to a search of
her house or the possible relevance of Mr. Coolidge’s absence from
the scene. Coolidge , 403 U. S., at 487 (“[W]e need not
consider the petitioner’s further argument that Mrs. Coolidge could
not or did not ‘waive’ her husband’s constitutional protection
against unreasonable searches and seizures”). See also Walter v. United States , 447 U. S. 649 , 660–661,
n. 2 (1980) (White, J., concurring in part and concurring in
judgment) (“Similarly, in Coolidge v. New
Hampshire , the Court held that a wife’s voluntary action in
turning over to police her husband’s guns and clothing did not
constitute a search and seizure by the government”). Footnote 2 The Courts of Appeals have disagreed over the
appropriate inquiry to be performed in determining whether
involvement of the police transforms a private individual into an
agent or instrument of the police. See United States v. Pervaz , 118 F. 3d 1, 5–6 (CA1 1997) (summarizing
approaches of various Circuits). The similarity between this case
and Coolidge avoids any need to resolve this broader
dispute in the present case. Footnote 3 That Sergeant Murray, unlike the officers in Coolidge , may have intended to perform a general search of
the house is inconsequential, as he ultimately did not do so; he
viewed only those items shown to him by Mrs. Randolph. Nor is it
relevant that, while Mrs. Coolidge intended to aid the police in
apprehending a criminal because she believed doing so would
exonerate her husband, Mrs. Randolph believed aiding the police
would implicate her husband. SCALIA, J., DISSENTING GEORGIA V. RANDOLPH 547 U. S. ____ (2006) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NO. 04-1067 GEORGIA, PETITIONER v. SCOTT FITZ
RANDOLPH

															on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
georgia

															[March 22, 2006]

															   Justice Scalia, dissenting.

															   I join the dissent of The Chief
Justice, but add these few words in response to Justice Stevens’
concurrence.

															   It is not as clear to me as it is to Justice
Stevens that, at the time the Fourth Amendment was adopted, a
police officer could enter a married woman’s home over her
objection, and could not enter with only her consent. Nor is it
clear to me that the answers to these questions depended solely on
who owned the house. It is entirely clear, however, that if the matter did depend solely on property
rights, a latter-day alteration of property rights would also
produce a latter-day alteration of the Fourth Amendment
outcome—without altering the Fourth Amendment itself.

															   Justice Stevens’ attempted critique of
originalism confuses the original import of the Fourth Amendment
with the background sources of law to which the Amendment, on its
original meaning, referred. From the date of its ratification until
well into the 20th century, violation of the Amendment was tied to
common-law trespass. See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27 ,
31–32 (2001); see also California v. Acevedo, 500 U. S. 565 ,
581, 583 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). On the basis
of that connection, someone who had power to license the search of
a house by a private party could authorize a police search. See 1
Restatement of Torts §167, and Comment b (1934); see also Williams v. Howard , 110 S. C. 82, 96
S. E. 251 (1918); Fennemore v. Armstrong , 29
Del. 35, 96 A. 204 (Super. Ct. 1915). The issue of who could give such consent generally depended, in turn, on “historical
and legal refinements” of property law. United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 , 171,
n. 7 (1974). As property law developed, individuals who
previously could not authorize a search might become able to do so,
and those who once could grant such consent might no longer have
that power. But changes in the law of property to which the Fourth
Amendment referred would not alter the Amendment’s meaning: that
anyone capable of authorizing a search by a private party could
consent to a warrantless search by the police.

															   There is nothing new or surprising in the
proposition that our unchanging Constitution refers to other bodies
of law that might themselves change. The Fifth Amendment provides,
for instance, that “private property” shall not “be taken for
public use, without just compensation”; but it does not purport to
define property rights. We have consistently held that “the
existence of a property interest is determined by reference to
‘existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent
source such as state law.’ ” Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156 , 164
(1998) (quoting Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408
U. S. 564 , 577 (1972)). The same is true of the Fourteenth
Amendment Due Process Clause’s protection of “property.” See Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U. S. ___, ___
(2005). This reference to changeable law presents no problem for
the originalist. No one supposes that the meaning of the
Constitution changes as States expand and contract property rights.
If it is indeed true, therefore, that a wife in 1791 could not
authorize the search of her husband’s house, the fact that current
property law provides otherwise is no more troublesome for the
originalist than the well established fact that a State must
compensate its takings of even those property rights that did not
exist at the time of the Founding.

															   In any event, Justice Stevens’ panegyric to
the equal rights of women under modern property law does
not support his conclusion that “[a]ssuming … both spouses are
competent, neither one is a master possessing the power to override
the other’s constitutional right to deny entry to their castle.” Ante , at 2–3. The issue at hand is what to do when there
is a conflict between two equals. Now that women have
authority to consent, as Justice Stevens claims men alone once did,
it does not follow that the spouse who refuses consent
should be the winner of the contest. Justice Stevens could just as
well have followed the same historical developments to the opposite
conclusion: Now that “the male and the female are equal partners,” ante , at 2, and women can consent to a search of their
property, men can no longer obstruct their wishes. Men and women
are no more “equal” in the majority’s regime, where both sexes can
veto each other’s consent, than on the dissent’s view, where both
sexes cannot.

															   Finally, I must express grave doubt that
today’s decision deserves Justice Stevens’ celebration as part of
the forward march of women’s equality. Given the usual patterns of
domestic violence, how often can police be expected to encounter
the situation in which a man urges them to enter the home while a
woman simultaneously demands that they stay out? The most common
practical effect of today’s decision, insofar as the contest
between the sexes is concerned, is to give men the power to stop
women from allowing police into their homes—which is, curiously
enough, precisely the power that Justice Stevens
disapprovingly presumes men had in 1791.