Cite as: 507 U. S. 111 (1993)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
of the hated general warrant is often cited as an important cause of the American Revolution.10
The First Congress enacted legislation authorizing the seizure and forfeiture of ships and cargos involved in customs offenses.11 Other statutes authorized the seizure of ships engaged in piracy.12 When a ship was engaged in acts of "piratical aggression," it was subject to confiscation notwithstanding the innocence of the owner of the vessel.13
sale." C. J. Hendry Co. v. Moore, 318 U. S. 133, 139-140 (1943) (footnotes omitted).
10 Writing for the Court in Stanford v. Texas, 379 U. S. 476, 481-482 (1965), Justice Stewart explained: "Vivid in the memory of the newly independent Americans were those general warrants known as writs of assistance under which officers of the Crown had so bedeviled the colonists. The hated writs of assistance had given customs officials blanket authority to search where they pleased for goods imported in violation of the British tax laws. They were denounced by James Otis as 'the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book,' because they placed 'the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.' The historic occasion of that denunciation, in 1761 at Boston, has been characterized as 'perhaps the most prominent event which inaugurated the resistance of the colonies to the oppressions of the mother country. "Then and there," said John Adams, "then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born." ' Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 625."
11 See, e. g., §§ 12, 36, 1 Stat. 39, 47; §§ 13, 14, 22, 27, 67, 1 Stat. 157-159, 161, 163-164, 176.
12 See The Palmyra, 12 Wheat. 1, 8 (1827).
13 "The next question is, whether the innocence of the owners can withdraw the ship from the penalty of confiscation under the act of Congress. Here, again, it may be remarked that the act makes no exception whatsoever, whether the aggression be with or without the co-operation of the owners. The vessel which commits the aggression is treated as the offender, as the guilty instrument or thing to which the forfeiture attaches, without any reference whatsoever to the character or conduct of the owner. The vessel or boat (says the act of Congress) from which such piratical aggression, &c., shall have been first attempted or made shall be
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