The preference for warrants is premised on the expectation that magistrates will be more likely than officers to perceive when justification for a proposed search is inadequate. The historical evidence indicates that the Framers preferred use of specific warrants rather than warrantless intrusions for essentially the same reason. The Framers sought to prevent unjustified searches and arrests from occurring, not merely to provide an after-the-fact remedy for unjustified intrusions. For example, the complaints they voiced about searches concerned the breach of the security of the house. Likewise, the constitutional texts they wrote did not simply seek to provide a post-intrusion remedy or condemn only the actual use of a general warrant; rather, the constitutional texts adopted a preventive strategy by consistently prohibiting even the issuance of a too-loose warrant.

The historical evidence also demonstrates that the Framers believed that the orderly and formal processes associated with specific warrants, including the judicial assessment of whether there was adequate cause for the intrusion, provided the best means of preventing violations of the security of person or house. In particular, the Framers thought that magistrates were more capable than ordinary officers of making sound decisions as to whether a search was justified.

The principal difference between framing-era statements and the modern warrant-preference construction is that the former sometimes expressed outright disdain for the character and judgment of ordinary officers.

Indeed, the Framers’ perception of the untrustworthiness of the ordinary officer was reinforced by class-consciousness and status concerns. It was disagreeable enough for an elite or middle-class householder to have to open his house to a search in response to a command from a high status magistrate acting under a judicial commission; it was a gross insult to the householder’s status as a “free-man” to be bossed about by an ordinary officer who was likely drawn from an inferior class.