Fourth Amendment
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50 free Fourth Amendment trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Fourth Amendment is a single sentence, yet it governs almost every encounter between Americans and the police. It decides when an officer can pull a driver over, search a bag, enter a home or read what is stored on a device, and what happens in court when the rules are broken. This quiz covers the amendment from its roots to the present day. It starts with the English precedents and colonial grievances that inspired it and the words the framers chose, then moves through the Supreme Court decisions that every civics and criminal justice student meets: the cases on homes, cars, schools, roadside stops, arrests and modern surveillance technology. Along the way it tests the doctrines and exceptions that tell police when a warrant is needed and when it is not. It is written for students revising for a government, civics or criminal procedure class, for teachers who want a ready-made review, and for anyone who has wondered what their rights are during a search. Every answer comes with a short explanation of the case or rule behind it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01FBI agents attached a listening device to the outside of what to catch Charles Katz placing illegal bets?
A telephone booth
A telephone booth on Sunset Boulevard was where Katz called bookmakers in Boston and Miami. The 1967 ruling stretched the amendment from property to private conversations.
Q 02In Kyllo v. United States, federal agents checked an Oregon home for marijuana grow lamps using what device?
A thermal imager
A thermal imager showed unusual heat coming off the roof and side walls. The Court ruled that aiming one at a home, even from the street, is a search that needs a warrant.
Q 03What did police attach for 28 days to a Jeep driven by a Washington nightclub owner in United States v. Jones?
A GPS tracker
A GPS tracker logged the Jeep's movements 24 hours a day. The Court held that physically fixing it to the car was a search in its own right.
Q 04Riley v. California requires a warrant before police search the digital contents of what item seized in an arrest?
A cell phone
A cell phone taken from David Riley after San Diego police pulled his car over held photos and videos that were used to tie him to a gang shooting.
Q 05California v. Greenwood let police search what without a warrant once a homeowner leaves it at the curb?
Household garbage
Household garbage at the roadside is open to animals, children, scavengers and snoops, the Court reasoned, so sealing it in opaque bags did not keep it private.
Q 06In Florida v. Jardines, bringing what onto a suspect's front porch counted as a search requiring a warrant?
A drug-sniffing dog
A drug-sniffing dog goes beyond the implied invitation that lets any visitor walk up to the door, the Court said. The 2013 decision was 5 to 4.
Q 07New Jersey v. T.L.O. began when a vice principal searched what item of a girl caught smoking in a school bathroom?
Her purse
Her purse held cigarettes and rolling paper, then marijuana. The Court let school officials search students without a warrant and on less evidence than police need.
Q 08Cleveland police raided Dollree Mapp's home hunting a suspect in the bombing of which future boxing promoter's house?
Don King
Don King was then a Cleveland gambling racketeer. When Mapp asked for a warrant, officers showed her a piece of paper, which she snatched and tucked inside her blouse.
Q 09Terry v. Ohio approved which police practice after a Cleveland detective found pistols on men casing a store?
Stop and frisk
Stop and frisk must rest on specific facts rather than a hunch, the Court said, but it needs less evidence than an arrest does.
Q 10Tennessee v. Garner restricts when police may use what against a fleeing suspect who poses no serious threat?
Deadly force
Deadly force used to stop an escape counts as a seizure, the Court held, after a Memphis officer shot a 15-year-old burglary suspect at a chain-link fence.
Q 11The Fourth Amendment says no warrants shall issue except upon which standard, also required to make an arrest?
Probable cause
Probable cause means facts sufficient for a prudent person to believe that evidence of a crime will be found. The Constitution uses the phrase without ever defining it.
Q 12Which future president introduced the Fourth Amendment in Congress along with the rest of the Bill of Rights?
James Madison
James Madison offered the amendments in 1789 to answer Anti-Federalist objections to the new Constitution. Three-fourths of the states had ratified them by December 1791.
Q 13Which colonial lawyer's 1761 attack on writs of assistance did John Adams call the spark of the Revolution?
James Otis
Q 21United States v. Leon lets courts admit evidence when police relied on a warrant later found invalid, acting in what?
Good faith
Good faith reliance on a warrant kept the drugs in evidence in 1984, even though the warrant should never have been issued for lack of grounds.
Q 22Carroll v. United States created the automobile exception after agents searched a car on a Michigan highway for what?
Illegal liquor
Illegal liquor was hidden in the back of the car. The Prohibition-era stop came after George Carroll had failed to complete a sale to undercover officers.
Q 23In Olmstead v. United States, the Court ruled in 1928 that which tactic against a Seattle bootlegger was no search?
Wiretapping
James Otis argued for five hours on behalf of more than fifty merchants and lost. The fame still won him election to the colonial legislature.
Q 14Writs of assistance, hated in the American colonies, let British customs officers search anywhere they liked for what?
Smuggled goods
Smuggled goods could be hunted in any building under a writ, which named no particular house and lapsed only six months after the king died. The name came from its order that sheriffs and subjects assist.
Q 15In Semayne's Case of 1604, Sir Edward Coke wrote that every person's house is to him as what?
His castle
His castle and fortress, in Coke's words. The same case still accepted that royal officers could enter a home when their purpose was lawful and they held a warrant.
Q 16Which 1914 case first barred federal prosecutors from using evidence taken from a home without a warrant?
Weeks v. United States
Weeks v. United States overturned the conviction of a Kansas City man for mailing lottery tickets. Its rule bound only federal courts for nearly fifty years.
Q 17Evidence derived from an illegal search goes by which metaphor, coined by Justice Felix Frankfurter?
Fruit of the poisonous tree
Fruit of the poisonous tree first appeared in Nardone v. United States in 1939, though the idea behind it dates to a 1920 case involving a lumber company.
Q 18Which doctrine lets an officer who is lawfully inside a home seize contraband lying on a table without a warrant?
Plain view
Plain view applies only when the officer has a right to be there and the item's criminal nature is immediately apparent, a test taken from Horton v. California.
Q 19Which doctrine from Hester v. United States lets police enter rural land beyond a home's yard without a warrant?
Open fields
Open fields get no protection, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1924. Sixty years later the Court applied that to Kentucky land behind a gate marked no trespassing.
Q 20Which legal term, central to Florida v. Jardines, names the area right around a house that shares the home's protection?
Curtilage
Curtilage is assessed by how close the area sits to the house, whether it lies inside an enclosure, how it is used and what the resident did to shield it from passers-by.
Wiretapping involved no trespass, the 5–4 majority said, because agents had worked from the street and an office basement without entering anyone's home.
Q 24Carpenter v. United States requires a warrant before police gather months of what data from a wireless carrier?
Location records
Location records covering 127 days tied Timothy Carpenter to a string of armed robberies at RadioShack and T-Mobile stores around Detroit.
Q 25Justice Potter Stewart wrote in Katz v. United States that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not what?
Places
Places had been the test until then, with courts asking whether agents physically intruded. The two-part privacy test now tied to Katz came from Justice Harlan's concurrence.
Q 26State and local police are bound by the Fourth Amendment through the Due Process Clause of which later amendment?
The Fourteenth
The Fourteenth was the route the Court took in Mapp v. Ohio in 1961. As written, the Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government.
Q 27Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz upheld which roadside stops made without suspecting any particular driver?
Sobriety checkpoints
Sobriety checkpoints passed by 6 votes to 3, yet Michigan's own supreme court then held that they violated the state constitution, so they stayed banned there.
Q 28Maryland v. King compared which booking step for people arrested for serious crimes to fingerprinting?
A DNA cheek swab
A DNA cheek swab is a negligible intrusion, the 5–4 majority held, and it lets police check whether an arrestee is tied to another crime scene or victim.
Q 29Vernonia School District v. Acton let an Oregon school district require random drug tests of which group?
Student athletes
Student athletes had to submit to testing before they could play, and during the season 10% of them were picked at random.
Q 30In Safford v. Redding, an Arizona middle school strip-searched a 13-year-old girl while looking for which drug?
Ibuprofen
Ibuprofen at prescription strength was barred by school rules. The Court ruled 8–1 that a classmate's accusation could not justify so intrusive a search.