Cite as: 532 U. S. 318 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
or occupied." 33 Hen. VIII, ch. 9, §§ 11-16, 5 Statutes at Large 84-85 (1541). A 17th-century act empowered "any person . . . whatsoever to seize and detain any . . . hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, or other trading person" found selling without a license. 8 & 9 Wm. III, ch. 25, §§ 3, 8, 10 Statutes at Large 81-83 (1697). And 18th-century statutes authorized the warrantless arrest of "rogues, vagabonds, beggars, and other idle and disorderly persons" (defined broadly to include jugglers, palm readers, and unlicensed play actors), 17 Geo. II, ch. 5, §§ 1-2, 5, 18 Statutes at Large 144, 145-147 (1744); "horrid" persons who "profanely swear or curse," 19 Geo. II, ch. 21, § 3, 18 Statutes at Large 445 (1746); individuals obstructing "publick streets, lanes or open passages" with "pipes, butts, barrels, casks or other vessels" or an "empty cart, car, dray or other carriage," 30 Geo. II, ch. 22, §§ 5, 13, 22 Statutes at Large 107-108, 111 (1757); and, most significantly of all given the circumstances of the case before us, negligent carriage drivers, 27 Geo. II, ch. 16, § 7, 21 Statutes at Large 188 (1754). See generally S. Blackerby, The Justice of Peace: His Companion, or a Summary of all the Acts of Parliament (1723) (cataloguing statutes); S. Welch, An Essay on the Office of Constable 19-22 (1758) (describing same).
The significance of these early English statutes lies not in proving that any common-law rule barring warrantless misdemeanor arrests that might have existed would have been subject to statutory override; the sovereign Parliament could of course have wiped away any judge-made rule. The point is that the statutes riddle Atwater's supposed common-law rule with enough exceptions to unsettle any contention that the law of the mother country would have left the Fourth Amendment's Framers of a view that it would necessarily have been unreasonable to arrest without warrant for a misdemeanor unaccompanied by real or threatened violence.
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