Cite as: 532 U. S. 318 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
Amendment did not originally apply to the States, see Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833), but that does not make state practice irrelevant in unearthing the Amend-ment's original meaning. A number of state constitutional search-and-seizure provisions served as models for the Fourth Amendment, see, e. g., N. H. Const. of 1784, pt. I, Art. XIX; Pa. Const. of 1776 (Declaration of Rights), Art. X, and the fact that many of the original States with such constitutional limitations continued to grant their own peace officers broad warrantless misdemeanor arrest authority undermines Atwater's contention that the founding generation meant to bar federal law enforcement officers from exercising the same authority. Given the early state practice, it is likewise troublesome for Atwater's view that just one year after the ratification of the Fourth Amendment, Congress vested federal marshals with "the same powers in executing the laws of the United States, as sheriffs and their deputies in the several states have by law, in executing the laws of their respective states." Act of May 2, 1792, ch. 28, § 9, 1 Stat. 265. Thus, as we have said before in only slightly different circumstances, the Second Congress apparently "saw no inconsistency between the Fourth Amendment and legislation giving United States marshals the same power as local peace officers" to make warrantless arrests. United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411, 420 (1976).10
The record thus supports Justice Powell's observation that "[t]here is no historical evidence that the Framers or proponents of the Fourth Amendment, outspokenly opposed to the infamous general warrants and writs of assistance, were at
10 Courts and commentators alike have read the 1792 Act as conferring broad warrantless arrest authority on federal officers, and, indeed, the Act's passage "so soon after the adoption of the Fourth Amendment itself underscores the probability that the constitutional provision was intended to restrict entirely different practices." Watson, 423 U. S., at 429 (Powell, J., concurring); see also Amar, Fourth Amendment First Principles, 107 Harv. L. Rev., at 764, and n. 14.
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