Katz v. United States · ¶5

We decline to adopt this formulation of the issues. In the first place, the correct solution of Fourth Amendment problems is not necessarily promoted by incantation of the phrase “constitutionally protected area.” Secondly, the Fourth Amendment cannot be translated into a general constitutional “right to privacy.” That Amendment protects individual privacy against certain kinds of governmental intrusion, but its protections go further, and often have nothing to do with privacy at all. Other provisions of the Constitution protect personal privacy from other forms of governmental invasion. But the protection of a person’s general right to privacy— his right to be let alone by other people — is, like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States.

U. S. Reports, bound volume
U. S. Reports, volume 389, at 347 (Library of Congress) · transcription: Caselaw Access Project
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