*92Justice Scalia

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Federal law enforcement officers obtained a search warrant for respondent’s house on the basis of an affidavit explaining that the warrant would be executed only after a controlled delivery of contraband to that location. We address two challenges to the constitutionality of this anticipatory warrant.

I

Respondent Jeffrey Grubbs purchased a videotape containing child pornography from a Web site operated by an undercover postal inspector. Officers from the Postal Inspection Service arranged a controlled delivery of a package containing the videotape to Grubbs’ residence. A postal inspector submitted a search warrant application to a Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of California, accompanied by an affidavit describing the proposed operation in detail. The affidavit stated:

“Execution of this search warrant will not occur unless and until the parcel has been received by a person(s) and has been physically taken into the residence .... At that time, and not before, this search warrant will be executed by me and other United States Postal inspectors, with appropriate assistance from other law enforcement officers in accordance with this warrant’s command.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a.

In addition to describing this triggering condition, the affidavit referred to two attachments, which described Grubbs’ residence and the items officers would seize. These attachments, but not the body of the affidavit, were incorporated into the requested warrant. The affidavit concluded:

“Based upon the foregoing facts, I respectfully submit there exists probable cause to believe that the items set forth in Attachment B to this affidavit and the search warrant, will be found [at Grubbs’ residence], which residence is further described at Attachment A.” Ibid.

*93The Magistrate Judge issued the warrant as requested. Two days later, an undercover postal inspector delivered the package. Grubbs’ wife signed for it and took the unopened package inside. The inspectors detained Grubbs as he left his home a few minutes later, then entered the house and commenced the search. Roughly 30 minutes into the search, Grubbs was provided with a copy of the warrant, which included both attachments but not the supporting affidavit that explained when the warrant would be executed. Grubbs consented to interrogation by the postal inspectors and admitted ordering the videotape. He was placed under arrest, and various items were seized, including the videotape.

A grand jury for the Eastern District of California indicted Grubbs on one count of receiving a visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. See 18 U. S. C. § 2252(a)(2). He moved to suppress the evidence seized during the search of his residence, arguing as relevant here that the warrant was invalid because it failed to list the triggering condition. After an evidentiary hearing, the District Court denied the motion. Grubbs pleaded guilty, but reserved his right to appeal the denial , of his motion to suppress.

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. 377 F. 3d 1072, amended, 389 F. 3d 1306 (2004). Relying on Circuit precedent, it held that “the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment applies with full force to the conditions precedent to an anticipatory search warrant.” 377 F. 3d, at 1077-1078 (citing United States v. Hotal, 143 F. 3d 1223, 1226 (CA9 1998)). An anticipatory warrant defective for that reason may be “cur[ed]” if the conditions precedent are set forth in an affidavit that is incorporated in the warrant and “presented to the person whose property is being searched.” 377 F. 3d, at 1079. Because the postal inspectors “failed to present the affidavit — the only document in which the triggering conditions were listed” — to Grubbs or *94his wife, the “warrant was . . . inoperative, and the search was illegal.” Ibid. We granted certiorari. 545 U. S. 1164 (2005).

II

Before turning to the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that the warrant at issue here ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement, we address the antecedent question whether anticipatory search warrants are categorically unconstitutional.1 An anticipatory warrant is “a warrant based upon an affidavit showing probable cause that at some future time (but not presently) certain evidence of crime will be located at a specified place.” 2 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 3.7(c), p. 398 (4th ed. 2004). Most anticipatory warrants subject their execution to some condition precedent other than the mere passage of time — a so-called “triggering condition.” The affidavit at issue here, for instance, explained that “[execution of th[e] search warrant will not occur unless and until the parcel [containing child pornography] has been received by a person(s) and has been physically taken into the residence.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a. If the government were to execute an anticipatory warrant before the triggering condition occurred, there would be no reason to believe the item described in the warrant could be found at the searched location; by definition, the triggering condition which establishes probable cause has not yet been satisfied when the warrant is issued. Grubbs argues that for this reason anticipatory warrants contravene the Fourth *95Amendment’s provision that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.”

We reject this view, as has every Court of Appeals to confront the issue, see, e. g., United States v. Loy, 191 F. 3d 360, 364 (CA3 1999) (collecting cases). Probable cause exists when “there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 238 (1983). Because the probable-cause requirement looks to whether evidence will be found when the search is conducted, all warrants are, in a sense, “anticipatory.” In the typical case where the police seek permission to search a house for an item they believe is already located there, the magistrate’s determination that there is probable cause for the search amounts to a prediction that the item will still be there when the warrant is executed. See People v. Glen, 30 N. Y. 2d 252, 258, 282 N. E. 2d 614, 617 (1972) (“[PJresent possession is only probative of the likelihood of future possession”).2 The anticipatory nature of warrants is even clearer in the context of electronic surveillance. See, e. g., Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967). When police request approval to tap a telephone line, they do so based on the probability that, during the course of the surveillance, the subject will use the phone to engage in crime-related conversations. The relevant federal provision requires a judge authorizing “interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications” to determine that “there is prob*96able cause for belief that particular communications concerning [one of various listed offenses] will be obtained through such interception.” 18 U. S. C. §2518(3)(b) (emphasis added); see also United States v. Ricciardelli, 998 F. 2d 8, 11, n. 3 (CA1 1993) (“[T]he magistrate issues the warrant on the basis of a substantial probability that crime-related conversations will ensue”). Thus, when an anticipatory warrant is issued, “the fact that the contraband is not presently located at the place described in the warrant is immaterial, so long as there is probable cause to believe that it will be there when the search warrant is executed.” United States v. Garcia, 882 F. 2d 699, 702 (CA2 1989) (quoting United States v. Lowe, 575 F. 2d 1193, 1194 (CA6 1978); internal quotation marks omitted).

Anticipatory warrants are, therefore, no different in principle from ordinary warrants. They require the magistrate to determine (1) that it is now probable that (2) contraband, evidence of a crime, or a fugitive will be on the described premises (3) when the warrant is executed. It should be noted, however, that where the anticipatory warrant places a condition (other than the mere passage of time) upon its execution, the first of these determinations goes not merely to what will probably be found if the condition is met. (If that were the extent of the probability determination, an anticipatory warrant could be issued for every house in the country, authorizing search and seizure ¿/contraband should be delivered — though for any single location there is no likelihood that contraband will be delivered.) Rather, the probability determination for a conditioned anticipatory warrant looks also to the likelihood that the condition will occur, and thus that a proper object of seizure will be on the described premises. In other words, for a conditioned anticipatory warrant to comply with the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of probable cause, two prerequisites of probability must be satisfied. It must be true not only that if the triggering condition occurs “there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place,” *97 Gates, supra, at 238, but also that there is probable cause to believe the triggering condition will occur. The supporting affidavit must provide the magistrate with sufficient information to evaluate both aspects of the probable-cause determination. See Garcia, supra, at 703.

In this case, the occurrence of the triggering condition— successful delivery of the videotape to Grubbs’ residence— would plainly establish probable cause for the search. In addition, the affidavit established probable cause to believe the triggering condition would be satisfied. Although it is possible that Grubbs could have refused delivery of the videotape he had ordered, that was unlikely. The Magistrate therefore “had a ‘substantial basis for . . . conclud[ing]’ that probable cause existed.” Gates, supra, at 238-239 (quoting Jones v. United States, 362 U. S. 257, 271 (1960)).

Ill

The Ninth Circuit invalidated the anticipatory search warrant at issue here because the warrant failed to specify the triggering condition. The Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement, it held, “applies with fall force to the conditions precedent to an anticipatory search warrant.” 377 F. 3d, at 1077-1078.

The Fourth Amendment, however, does not set forth some general “particularity requirement.” It specifies only two matters that must be “particularly describ[ed]” in the warrant: “the place to be searched” and “the persons or things to be seized.” We have previously rejected efforts to expand the scope of this provision to embrace unenumerated matters. In Dalia v. United States, 441 U. S. 238 (1979), we considered an order authorizing the interception of oral communications by means of a “bug” installed by the police in the petitioner’s office. The petitioner argued that, if a covert entry is necessary to install such a listening device, the authorizing order must “explicitly set forth its approval of such entries before the fact.” Id., at 255. This argument fell before the “‘precise and clear’” words of the Fourth *98Amendment: “Nothing in the language of the Constitution or in this Court’s decisions interpreting that language suggests that, in addition to the [requirements set forth in the text], search warrants also must include a specification of the precise manner in which they are to be executed.” Ibid. (quoting Stanford v. Texas, 379 U. S. 476, 481 (1965)); 441 U. S., at 257. The language of the Fourth Amendment is likewise decisive here; its particularity requirement does not include the conditions precedent to execution of the warrant.

Respondent, drawing upon the Ninth Circuit’s analysis below, relies primarily on two related policy rationales. First, he argues, setting forth the triggering condition in the warrant itself is necessary “to delineate the limits of the executing officer’s power.” Brief for Respondent 20. This is an application, respondent asserts, of the following principle: “[I]f there is a precondition to the valid exercise of executive power, that precondition must be particularly identified on the face of the warrant.” Id., at 23. That principle is not to be found in the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment does not require that the warrant set forth the magistrate’s basis for finding probable cause, even though probable cause is the quintessential “precondition to the valid exercise of executive power.” Much less does it require description of a triggering condition.

Second, respondent argues that listing the triggering condition in the warrant is necessary to “ ‘assur[e] the individual whose property is searched or seized of the lawful authority of the executing officer, his need to search, and the limits of his power to search.’” Id., at 19 (quoting United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 9 (1977)). The Ninth Circuit went even further, asserting that if the property owner were not informed of the triggering condition, he “would ‘stand [no] real chance of policing the officers’ conduct.’ ” 377 F. 3d, at 1079 (quoting Ramirez v. Butte-Silver Bow County, 298 F. 3d 1022, 1027 (CA9 2002)). This argument assumes that the executing officer must present the property owner with *99a copy of the warrant before conducting his search. See 377 F. 3d, at 1079, n. 9. In fact, however, neither the Fourth Amendment nor Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 imposes such a requirement. See Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U. S. 551, 562, n. 5 (2004). “The absence of a constitutional requirement that the warrant be exhibited at the outset of the search, or indeed until the search has ended, is ... evidence that the requirement of particular description does not protect an interest in monitoring searches.” United States v. Stefonek, 179 F. 3d 1030, 1034 (CA7 1999) (citations omitted). The Constitution protects property owners not by giving them license to engage the police in a debate over the basis for the warrant, but by interposing, ex ante, the “deliberate, impartial judgment of a judicial officer . . . between the citizen and the police,” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 481-482 (1963), and by providing, ex post, a right to suppress evidence improperly obtained and a cause of action for damages.

Hs * *

Because the Fourth Amendment does not require that the triggering condition for an anticipatory search warrant be set forth in the warrant itself, the Court of Appeals erred in invalidating the warrant at issue here. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

Justice Souter,

with whom

Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsburg join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I agree with the Court that anticipatory warrants are constitutional for the reasons stated in Part II of the Court’s *100opinion, and I join in the disposition of this case. But I would qualify some points made in Part III.

The Court notes that a warrant’s failure to specify the place to be searched and the objects sought violates an express textual requirement of the Fourth Amendment, whereas the text says,nothing about a condition placed by the issuing magistrate on the authorization to search (here, delivery of the package of contraband). That textual difference is, however, no authority for neglecting to specify the point or contingency intended by the magistrate to trigger authorization, and the government should beware of banking on the terms of a warrant without such specification. The notation of a starting date was an established feature even of the objectionable 18th-century writs of assistance, see, e. g., Massachusetts Writs of Assistance Bill, 1762, reprinted in M. Smith, The Writs of Assistance Case 567-568 (1978); Writ of Assistance (English) of George III, 1761, reprinted in id., at 524-527. And it is fair to say that the very word “warrant” in the Fourth Amendment means a statement of authority that sets out the time at which (or, in the case of anticipatory warrants, the condition on which) the authorization begins.*

An issuing magistrate’s failure to mention that condition can lead to several untoward consequences with constitutional significance. To begin with, a warrant that fails to tell the truth about what a magistrate authorized cannot inform the police officer’s responsibility to respect the limits of authorization, see Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U. S. 551, 560-563, and n. 4 (2004), a failing assuming real significance when the warrant is not executed by the official who applied for it and happens to know the unstated condition. The peril is that if an officer simply takes such a warrant on its face and makes the ostensibly authorized search before the unstated *101condition has been met, the search will be held unreasonable. It is true that we have declined to apply the exclusionary rule when a police officer reasonably relies on the product of a magistrate’s faulty judgment or sloppy practice, see Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U. S. 981, 987-991 (1984). But when a government officer obtains what the magistrate says is an anticipatory warrant, he must know or should realize when it omits the condition on which authorization depends, and it is hard to see why the government should not be held to the condition despite the unconditional face of the warrant. Cf. Groh v. Ramirez, supra, at 554-555, 563, and n. 6 (declaring unconstitutional a search conducted pursuant to a warrant failing to specify the items the government asked the magistrate permission to seize in part because “officers leading a search team must ‘make sure that they have a proper warrant that in fact authorizes the search and seizure they are about to conduct’ ” (brackets omitted)).

Nor does an incomplete anticipatory warrant address an owner’s interest in an accurate statement of the government’s authority to search property. To be sure, the extent of that interest is yet to be settled; in Groh v. Ramirez, supra, the Court was careful to note that the right of an owner to demand to see a copy of the warrant before making way for the police had not been determined, id., at 562, n. 5, and it remains undetermined today. But regardless of any right on the owner’s part, showing an accurate warrant reliably “assures the individual whose property is searched or seized of the lawful authority of the executing officer, his need to search, and the limits of his power to search.” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 9 (1977), quoted in Groh v. Ramirez, supra, at 561. And if a later case holds that the homeowner has a right to inspect the warrant on request, a statement of the condition of authorization would give the owner a right to correct any misapprehension on the police’s part that the condition had been met when in fact it had not been. If the police were then to enter any*102way without a reasonable (albeit incorrect) justification, the search would certainly be open to serious challenge as unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

Justice Blackmun

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case requires us once again to consider the so-called “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment and its application to the search of a closed container in the trunk of a car.

I

On October 28, 1987, Officer Coleman of the Santa Ana, Cal., Police Department received a telephone call from a fed*567eral drug enforcement agent in Hawaii. The agent informed Coleman that he had seized a package containing marijuana which was to have been delivered to the Federal Express Office in Santa Ana and which was addressed to J. R. Daza at 805 West Stevens Avenue in that city. The agent arranged to send the package to Coleman instead. Coleman then was to take the package to the Federal Express office and arrest the person who arrived to claim it.

Coleman received the package on October 29, verified its contents, and took it to the Senior Operations Manager at the Federal Express office. At about 10:30 a.m. on October 30, a man, who identified himself as Jamie Daza, arrived to claim the package. He accepted it and drove to his apartment on West Stevens. He carried the package into the apartment.

At 11:45 a.m., officers observed Daza leave the apartment and drop the box and paper that had contained the marijuana into a trash bin. Coleman at that point left the scene to get a search warrant. About 12:05 p.m., the officers saw Richard St. George leave the apartment carrying a blue knapsack which appeared to be half full. The officers stopped him as he was driving off, searched the knapsack, and found 114 pounds of marijuana.

At 12:30 p.m., respondent Charles Steven Acevedo arrived. He entered Daza’s apartment, stayed for about 10 minutes, and reappeared carrying a brown paper bag that looked full. The officers noticed that the bag was the size of one of the wrapped marijuana packages sent from Hawaii. Acevedo walked to a silver Honda in the parking lot. He placed the bag in the trunk of the car and started to drive away. Fearing the loss of evidence, officers in a marked police car stopped him. They opened the trunk and the bag, and found marijuana.1

*568Respondent was charged in state court with possession of marijuana for sale, in violation of Cal. Health & Safety Code Ann. § 11359 (West Supp. 1991). App. 2. He moved to suppress the marijuana found in the car. The motion was denied. He then pleaded guilty but appealed the denial of the suppression motion.

The California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, concluded that the marijuana found in the paper bag in the car’s trunk should have been suppressed. 216 Cal. App. 3d 586, 265 Cal. Rptr. 23 (1990). The court concluded that the officers had probable cause to believe that the paper bag contained drugs but lacked probable cause to suspect that Acevedo’s car, itself, otherwise contained contraband. Because the officers’ probable cause was directed specifically at the bag, the court held that the case was controlled by United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), rather than by United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 (1982). Although the court agreed that the officers could seize the paper bag, it held that, under Chadwick, they could not open the bag without first obtaining a warrant for that purpose. The court then recognized “the anomalous nature” of the dichotomy between the rule in Chadwick and the rule in Ross. 216 Cal. App. 3d, at 592, 265 Cal. Rptr., at 27. That dichotomy dictates that if there is probable cause to search a car, then the entire car—including any closed container found therein—may be searched without a warrant, but if there is probable cause only as to a container in the car, the container may be held but not searched until a warrant is obtained.

The Supreme Court of California denied the State’s petition for review. App. E to Pet. for Cert. 33. On May 14, 1990, Justice O’Connor stayed enforcement of the Court of Appeal’s judgment pending the disposition of the State’s petition for certiorari, and, if that petition were granted, the issuance of the mandate of this Court.

We granted certiorari, 498 U. S. 807 (1990), to reexamine the law applicable to a closed container in an automobile, a *569subject that has troubled courts and law enforcement officers since it was first considered in Chadwick.

h-i 1 — 1

The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Contemporaneously with the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, the First Congress, and, later, the Second and Fourth Congresses, distinguished between the need for a warrant to search for contraband concealed in “a dwelling house or similar place” and the need for a warrant to search for contraband concealed in a movable vessel. See Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 151 (1925). See also Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 623-624 (1886). In Carroll, this Court established an exception to the warrant requirement for moving vehicles, for it recognized

“a necessary difference between a search of a store, dwelling house or other structure in respect of which a proper official warrant readily may be obtained, and a search of a ship, motor boat, wagon or automobile, for contraband goods, where it is not practicable to secure a warrant because the vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought.” 267 U. S., at 153.

It therefore held that a warrantless search of an automobile, based upon probable cause to believe that the vehicle contained evidence of crime in the light of an exigency arising out of the likely disappearance of the vehicle, did not contravene the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. See id., at 158-159.

The Court refined the exigency requirement in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42 (1970), when it held that the existence of exigent circumstances was to be determined at the time the automobile is seized. The car search at issue in *570 Chambers took place at the police station, where the vehicle was immobilized, some time after the driver had been arrested. Given probable cause and exigent circumstances at the time the vehicle was first stopped, the Court held that the later warrantless search at the station passed constitutional muster. The validity of the later search derived from the ruling in Carroll that an immediate search without a warrant at the moment of seizure would have been permissible. See Chambers, 399 U. S., at 51. The Court reasoned in Chambers that the police could search later whenever they could have searched earlier, had they so chosen. Id., at 51-52. Following Chambers, if the police have probable cause to justify a warrantless seizure of an automobile on a public roadway, they may conduct either an immediate or a delayed search of the vehicle.

In United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, decided in 1982, we held that a warrantless search of an automobile under the CaiToll doctrine could include a search of a container or package found inside the car when such a search was supported by probable cause. The warrantless search of Ross’ car occurred after an informant told the police that he had seen Ross complete a drug transaction using drugs stored in the trunk of his car. The police stopped the car, searched it, and discovered in the trunk a brown paper bag containing drugs. We decided that the search of Ross’ car was not unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment: “The scope of a warrantless search based on probable cause is no narrower — and no broader — than the scope of a search authorized by a warrant supported by probable cause.” Id., at 823. Thus, “[i]f probable cause justifies the search of a lawfully stopped vehicle, it justifies the search of every part of the vehicle and its contents that may conceal the object of the search.”' Id., at 825. In Ross, therefore, we clarified the scope of the Carroll doctrine as properly including a “probing search” of compartments and containers within the automobile so long as the search is supported by probable cause. Id., at 800.

*571In addition to this clarification, Ross distinguished the Carroll doctrine from the separate rule that governed the search of closed containers. See 456 U. S., at 817. The Court had announced this separate rule, unique to luggage and other closed packages, bags, and containers, in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977). In Chadwick, federal narcotics agents had probable cause to believe that a 200-pound double-locked footlocker contained marijuana. The agents tracked the locker as the defendants removed it from a train and carried it through the station to a waiting car. As soon as the defendants lifted the locker into the trunk of the car, the agents arrested them, seized the locker, and searched it. In this Court, the United States did not contend that the locker’s brief contact with the automobile’s trunk sufficed to make the Carroll doctrine applicable. Rather, the United States urged that the search of movable luggage could be considered analogous to the search of an automobile. 433 U. S., at 11-12.

The Court rejected this argument because, it reasoned, a person expects more privacy in his luggage and personal effects than he does in his automobile. Id., at 13. Moreover, it concluded that as “may often not be the case when automobiles are seized,” secure storage facilities are usually available when the police seize luggage. Id., at 13, n. 7.

In Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 (1979), the Court extended Chadwick’s, rule to apply to a suitcase actually being transported in the trunk of a car. In Sanders, the police had probable cause to believe a suitcase contained marijuana. They watched as the defendant placed the suitcase in the trunk of a taxi and was driven away. The police pursued the taxi for several blocks, stopped it, found the suitcase in the trunk, and searched it. Although the Court had applied the Carroll doctrine to searches of integral parts of the automobile itself, (indeed, in Carroll, contraband whiskey was in the upholstery of the seats, see 267 U. S., at 136), it did not extend the doctrine to the warrantless search of personal lug*572gage “merely because it was located in an automobile lawfully stopped by the police.” 442 U. S., at 765. Again, the Sanders majority stressed the heightened privacy expectation in personal luggage and concluded that the presence of luggage in an automobile did not diminish the owner’s expectation of privacy in his personal items. Id., at 764-765. Cf. California v. Carney, 471 U. S. 386 (1985).

In Ross, the Court endeavored to distinguish between Carroll, which governed the Ross automobile search, and Chad-tuick, which governed the Sanders automobile search. It held that the Carroll doctrine covered searches of automobiles when the police had probable cause to search an entire vehicle, but that the Chadwick doctrine governed searches of luggage when the officers had probable cause to search only a container within the vehicle. Thus, in a Ross situation, the police could conduct a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment without obtaining a warrant, whereas in a Sanders situation, the police had to obtain a warrant before they searched.

Justice Stevens is correct, of course, that Ross involved the scope of an automobile search. See post, at 592. Ross held that closed containers encountered by the police during a warrantless search of a car pursuant to the automobile exception could also be searched. Thus, this Court in Ross took the critical step of saying that closed containers in cars could be searched without a warrant because of their presence within the automobile. Despite the protection that Sanders purported to extend to closed containers, the privacy interest in those closed containers yielded to the broad scope of an automobile search.

h-i 1 — 1 I — l

The facts m this case closely resemble the facts m Ross. In Ross, the police had probable cause to believe that drugs were stored in the trunk of a particular car. See 456 U. S., at 800. Here, the California Court of Appeal concluded that the police had probable cause to believe that respondent was *573carrying marijuana in a bag in his car’s trunk.2 216 Cal. App. 3d, at 590, 265 Cal. Rptr., at 25. Furthermore, for what it is worth, in Ross, as here, the drugs in the trunk were contained in a brown paper bag.

This Court in Ross rejected Chadwick’s distinction between containers and cars. It concluded that the expectation of privacy in one’s vehicle is equal to one’s expectation of privacy in the container, and noted that “the privacy interests in a car’s trunk or glove compartment may be no less than those in a movable container.” 456 U. S., at 823. It also recognized that it was arguable that the same exigent circumstances that permit a warrantless search of an automobile would justify the warrantless search of a movable container. Id., at 809. In deference to the rule of Chadwick and Sanders, however, the Court put that question to one side. Id., at 809-810. It concluded that the time and expense of the warrant process would be misdirected if the police could search every cubic inch of an automobile until they discovered a paper sack, at which point the Fourth Amendment required them to take the sack to a magistrate for permission to look inside. We now must decide the question deferred in Ross: whether the Fourth Amendment requires the police to obtain a warrant to open the sack in a movable vehicle simply because they lack probable cause to search the entire car. We conclude that it does not.

IV

Dissenters in Ross asked why the suitcase in Sanders was “more private, less difficult for police to seize and store, or in *574any other relevant respect more properly subject to the warrant requirement, than a container that police discover iñ a probable-cause search of an entire automobile?” Id., at 839-840. We now agree that a container found after a general search of the automobile and a container found in a car after a limited search for the container are equally easy for the police to store and for the suspect to hide or destroy. In fact, we see no principled distinction in terms of either the privacy expectation or the exigent circumstances between the paper bag found by the police in Ross and the paper bag found by the police here. Furthermore, by attempting to distinguish between a container for which the police are specifically searching and a container which they come across in a car, we have provided only minimal protection for privacy and have impeded effective law enforcement.

The line between probable cause to search a vehicle and probable cause to search a package in that vehicle is not always clear, and separate rules that govern the two objects to be searched may enable the police to broaden their power to make warrantless searches and disserve privacy interests. We noted this in Ross in the context of a search of an entire vehicle. Recognizing that under Carroll, the “entire vehicle itself . . . could be searched without a warrant,” we concluded that “prohibiting police from opening immediately a container in which the object of the search is most likely to be found and instead forcing them first to comb the entire vehicle would actually exacerbate the intrusion on privacy interests.” 456 U. S., at 821, n. 28. At the moment when officers stop an automobile, it may be less than clear whether they suspect with a high degree of certainty that the vehicle contains drugs in a bag or simply contains drugs. If the police know that they may open a bag only if they are actually searching the entire car, they may search more extensively *575than they otherwise would in order to establish the general probable cause required by Ross.

Such a situation is not farfetched. In United States v. Johns, 469 U. S. 478 (1985), Customs agents saw two trucks drive to a private airstrip and approach two small planes. The agents drew near the trucks, smelled marijuana, and then saw in the backs of the trucks packages wrapped in a manner that marijuana smugglers customarily employed. The agents took the trucks to headquarters and searched the packages without a warrant. Id., at 481. Relying on Chadwick, the defendants argued that the search was unlawful. Id., at 482. The defendants contended that Ross was inapplicable because the agents lacked probable cause to search anything but the packages themselves and supported this contention by noting that a search of the entire vehicle never occurred. Id., at 483. We rejected that argument and found Chadwick and Sanders inapposite because the agents had probable cause to search the entire body of each truck, although they had chosen not to do so. Id., at 482-483. We cannot see the benefit of a rule that requires law enforcement officers to conduct a more intrusive search in order to justify a less intrusive one.

To the extent that the Chadwick-Sanders rule protects privacy, its protection is minimal. Law enforcement officers may seize a container and hold it until they obtain a search warrant. Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 13. “Since the police, by hypothesis, have probable cause to seize the property, we can assume that a warrant will be routinely forthcoming in the overwhelming majority of cases. ” Sanders, 442 U. S., at 770 (dissenting opinion). And the police often will be able to search containers without a warrant, despite the Chadwick-Sanders rule, as a search incident to a lawful arrest. In New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981), the Court said:

*576“[W]e hold that when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.

“It follows from this conclusion that the police may also examine the contents of any containers found within the passenger compartment.” Id., at 460 (footnote omitted).

Under Belton, the same probable cause to believe that a container holds drugs will allow the police to arrest the person transporting the container and search it.

Finally, the search of a paper bag intrudes far less on individual privacy than does the incursion sanctioned long ago in Carroll. In that case, prohibition agents slashed the upholstery of the automobile. This Court nonetheless found their search to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. If destroying the interior of an automobile is not unreasonable, we cannot conclude that looking inside a closed container is. In light of the minimal protection to privacy afforded by the Chadwick-Sanders rule, and our serious doubt whether that rule substantially serves privacy interests, we now hold that the Fourth Amendment does not compel separate treatment for an automobile search that extends only to a container within the vehicle.

V

The Chadwick-Sanders rule not only has failed to protect privacy but also has confused courts and police officers and impeded effective law enforcement. The conflict between the Carroll doctrine cases and the Chadwick-Sanders line has been criticized in academic commentary. See, e. g., Gardner, Searches and Seizures of Automobiles and Their Contents: Fourth Amendment Considerations in a Post-Ross World, 62 Neb. L. Rev. 1 (1983); Latzer, Searching Cars and Their Contents: United States v. Ross, 18 Crim. L. Bull. 381 (1982); Kamisar, The “Automobile Search” Cases: The Court Does Little to Clarify the “Labyrinth” of Judicial Uncer*577tainty, in 3 The Supreme Court: Trends and Developments 1980-1981, p. 69 (D. Opperman ed. 1982). One leading authority on the Fourth Amendment, after comparing Chadwick and Sanders with Carroll and its progeny, observed: “These two lines of authority cannot be completely reconciled, and thus how one comes out in the container-in-the-car situation depends upon which line of authority is used as a point of departure.” 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure 63 (2d ed. 1987).

The discrepancy between the two rules has led to confusion for law enforcement officers. For example, when an officer, who has developed probable cause to believe that a vehicle contains drugs, begins to search the vehicle and immediately discovers a closed container, which rule applies? The defendant will argue that the fact that the officer first chose to search the container indicates that his probable cause extended only to the container and that Chadtvick and Sanders therefore require a warrant. On the other hand, the fact that the officer first chose to search in the most obvious location should not restrict the propriety of the search. The Chadwick rule, as applied in Sanders, has devolved into an anomaly such that the more likely the police are to discover drugs in a container, the less authority they have to search it. We have noted the virtue of providing “‘“clear and unequivocal” guidelines to the law enforcement profession.’” Minnick v. Mississippi, 498 U. S. 146, 151 (1990), quoting Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U. S. 676, 682 (1988). The Chadwick-Sanders rule is the antithesis of a “ ‘clear and unequivocal’ guideline.”

Justice Stevens argues that the decisions of this Court evince a lack of confusion about the automobile exception. See post, at 594. The first case cited by the dissent, United States v. Place, 462 U. S. 696 (1983), however, did not involve an automobile at all. We considered in Place the temporary detention of luggage in an airport. Not only was no automobile involved, but the defendant, Place, was waiting *578at the airport to board his plane rather than preparing to leave the airport in a car. Any similarity to Sanders, in which the defendant was leaving the airport in a car, is remote at best. Place had nothing to do with the automobile exception and is inapposite.

Nor does Justice Stevens’ citation of Oklahoma v. Castleberry, 471 U. S. 146 (1985), support his contention. Cas-tleberry presented the same question about the application of the automobile exception to the search of a closed container that we face here. In Castleberry, we affirmed by an equally divided court. That result illustrates this Court’s continued struggle with the scope of the automobile exception rather than the absence of confusion in applying it.

Justice Stevens also argues that law enforcement has not been impeded because the Court has decided 29 Fourth Amendment cases since Ross in favor of the government. See post, at 600. In each of these cases, the government appeared as the petitioner. The dissent fails to explain how the loss of 29 cases below, not to mention the many others which this Court did not hear, did not interfere with law enforcement. The fact that the state courts and the Federal Courts of Appeals have been reversed in their Fourth Amendment holdings 29 times since 1982 further demonstrates the extent to which our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has confused the courts.

Most important, with the exception of United States v. Johns, 469 U. S. 478 (1985), and Texas v. Brown, 460 U. S. 730 (1983), the Fourth Amendment cases cited by the dissent do not concern automobiles or the automobile exception. From Carroll through Ross, this Court has explained that automobile searches differ from other searches. The dissent fails to acknowledge this basic principle and so misconstrues and misapplies our Fourth Amendment case law.

The Chadwick dissenters predicted that the container rule would have “the perverse result of allowing fortuitous circumstances to control the outcome” of various searches. 433 *579U. S., at 22. The rule also was so confusing that within two years after Chadwick, this Court found it necessary to expound on the meaning of that decision and explain its application to luggage in general. Sanders, 442 U. S., at 761-764. Again, dissenters bemoaned the “inherent opaqueness” of the difference between the Carroll and Chadwick principles and noted “the confusion to be created for all concerned.” Id., at 771. See also Robbins v. California, 453 U. S. 420, 425-426 (1981) (listing cases decided by Federal Courts of Appeals since Chadwick had been announced). Three years after Sanders, we returned in Ross to “this troubled area,” 456 U. S., at 817, in order to assert that Sanders had not cut back on Carroll.

Although we have recognized firmly that the doctrine of stare decisis serves profoundly important purposes in our legal system, this Court has overruled a prior case on the comparatively rare occasion when it has bred confusion or been a derelict or led to anomalous results. See, e. g., Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Brady, 430 U. S. 274, 288-289 (1977). Sanders was explicitly undermined in Ross, 456 U. S., at 824, and the existence of the dual regimes for automobile searches that uncover containers has proved as confusing as the Chadwick and Sanders dissenters predicted. We conclude that it is better to adopt one clear-cut rule to govern automobile searches and eliminate the warrant requirement for closed containers set forth in Sanders.

VI

The interpretation of the Carroll doctrine set forth m Ross now applies to all searches of containers found in an automobile. In other words, the police may search without a warrant if their search is supported by probable cause. The Court in Ross put it this way:

“The scope of a warrantless search of an automobile . . . is not defined by the nature of the container in which the contraband is secreted. Rather, it is defined by the ob*580ject of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe that it may be found.” 456 U. S., at 824.

It went on to note: “Probable cause to believe that a container placed in the trunk of a taxi contains contraband or evidence does not justify a search of the entire cab.” Ibid. We reaffirm that principle. In the case before us, the police had probable cause to believe that the paper bag in the automobile’s trunk contained marijuana. That probable cause now allows a warrantless search of the paper bag. The facts in the record reveal that the police did not have probable cause to believe that contraband was hidden in any other part of the automobile and a search of the entire vehicle would have been without probable cause and unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

Our holding today neither extends the Carroll doctrine nor broadens the scope of the permissible automobile search delineated in Carroll, Chambers, and Ross. It remains a “cardinal principle that ‘searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.’” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 390 (1978), quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967) (footnotes omitted). We held in Ross: “The exception recognized in Carroll is unquestionably one that is ‘specifically established and well delineated.’” 456 U. S., at 825.

Until today, this Court has drawn a curious line between the search of an automobile that coincidentally turns up a container and the search of a container that coincidentally turns up in an automobile. The protections of the Fourth Amendment must not turn on such coincidences. We therefore interpret Carroll as providing one rule to govern all automobile searches. The police may search an automobile and the containers within it where they have probable cause to believe contraband or evidence is contained.

*581The judgment of the California Court of Appeal is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Scalia,

concurring in the judgment.

I agree with the dissent that it is anomalous for a briefcase to be protected by the “general requirement” of a prior warrant when it is being carried along the street, but for that same briefcase to become unprotected as soon as it is carried into an automobile. On the other hand, I agree with the Court that it would be anomalous for a locked compartment in an automobile to be unprotected by the “general requirement” of a prior warrant, but for an unlocked briefcase within the automobile to be protected. I join in the judgment of the Court because I think its holding is inore faithful to the text and tradition of the Fourth Amendment, and if these anomalies in our jurisprudence are ever to be eliminated that is the direction in which we should travel.

The Fourth Amendment does not by its terms require a prior warrant for searches and seizures; it merely prohibits searches and seizures that are “unreasonable.” What it explicitly states regarding warrants is by way of limitation upon their issuance rather than requirement of their use. See Wakely v. Hart, 6 Binney 316, 318 (Pa. 1814). For the warrant was a means of insulating officials from personal liability assessed by colonial juries. An officer who searched or seized without a warrant did so at his own risk; he would be liable for trespass, including exemplary damages, unless the jury found that his action was “reasonable.” Amar, The Bill of Rights as a Constitution, 100 Yale L. J. 1131, 1178-1180 (1991); Huckle v. Money, 2 Wils. 205, 95 Eng. Rep. 768 (K. B. 1763). If, however, the officer acted pursuant to a proper warrant, he would be absolutely immune. See Bell v. Clapp, 10 Johns. 263 (N. Y. 1813); 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries 288 (1769). By restricting the issuance of war*582rants, the Framers endeavored to preserve the jury’s role in regulating searches and seizures. Amar, supra; Posner, Rethinking the Fourth Amendment, 1981 S. Ct. Rev. 49, 72-73; see also T. Taylor, Two Studies in Constitutional Interpretation 41 (1969).

Although the Fourth Amendment does not explicitly impose the requirement of a warrant, it is of course textually possible to consider that implicit within the requirement of reasonableness. For some years after the (still continuing) explosion in Fourth Amendment litigation that followed our announcement of the exclusionary rule in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914), our jurisprudence lurched back and forth between imposing a categorical warrant requirement and looking to reasonableness alone. (The opinions preferring a warrant involved searches of structures.) Compare Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 146 (1947), with Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10 (1948); compare Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699 (1948), with United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56 (1950). See generally Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969). By the late 1960’s, the preference for a warrant had won out, at least rhetorically. See Chimel; Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971).

The victory was illusory. Even before today’s decision, the “warrant requirement” had become so riddled with exceptions that it was basically unrecognizable. In 1985, one commentator cataloged nearly 20 such exceptions, including “searches incident to arrest. . . automobile searches . . . border searches . . . administrative searches of regulated businesses . . . exigent circumstances . . . searches] incident to nonarrest when there is probable cause to arrest . . . boat boarding for document checks . . . welfare searches . . . inventory searches . . . airport searches . . . school search[es]. ...” Bradley, Two Models of the Fourth Amendment, 83 Mich. L. Rev. 1468, 1473-1474 (footnotes omitted). Since then, we have added at least two more. California v. Carney, 471 *583U. S. 386 (1985) (searches of mobile homes); O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U. S. 709 (1987) (searches of offices of government employees). Our intricate body of law regarding “reasonable expectation of privacy” has been developed largely as a means of creating these exceptions, enabling a search to be denominated not a Fourth Amendment “search” and therefore not subject to the general warrant requirement. Cf. id., at 729 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).

Unlike the dissent, therefore, I do not regard today’s holding as some momentous departure, but rather as merely the continuation of an inconsistent jurisprudence that has been with us for years. Cases like United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), and Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 (1979), have taken the “preference for a warrant” seriously, while cases like United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 (1982), and Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925), have not. There can be no clarity in this area unless we make up our minds, and unless the principles we express comport with the actions we take.

In my view, the path out of this confusion should be sought by returning to the first principle that the “reasonableness” requirement of the Fourth Amendment affords the protection that the common law afforded. See County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, ante, at 60 (Scalia, J., dissenting); People v. Chiagles, 237 N. Y. 193, 195, 142 N. E. 583 (1923) (Cardozo, J.). Cf. California v. Hodari D., 499 U. S. 621, 624-627 (1991). I have no difficulty with the proposition that that includes the requirement of a warrant, where the common law required a warrant; and it may even be that changes in the surrounding legal rules (for example, elimination of the common-law rule that reasonable, good-faith belief was no defense to absolute liability for trespass, Little v. Barreme, 2 Cranch 170 (1804) (Marshall, C. J.); see generally Amar, Of Sovereignty and Federalism, 96 Yale L. J. 1425, 1486-1487 (1987)), may make a warrant indispensable to reasonableness where it once was not. But the supposed “gen*584eral rule” that a warrant is always required does not appear to have any basis in the common law, see, e. g., Carroll, supra, at 150-153; Gelston v. Hoyt, 3 Wheat. 246, 310-311 (1818) (Story, J.); Wakely, supra, and confuses rather than facilitates any attempt to develop rules of reasonableness in light of changed legal circumstances, as the anomaly eliminated and the anomaly created by today’s holding both demonstrate.

And there are more anomalies still. Under our precedents (as at common law), a person may be arrested outside the home on the basis of probable cause, without an arrest warrant. United States v. Watson, 423 U. S. 411, 418-421 (1976); Rohan v. Sawin, 59 Mass. 281 (1851). Upon arrest, the person, as well as the area within his grasp, may be searched for evidence related to the crime. Chimel v. California, supra, at 762-763; People v. Chiagles, supra (collecting authority). Under these principles, if a known drug dealer is carrying a briefcase reasonably believed to contain marijuana (the unauthorized possession of which is a crime), the police may arrest him and search his person on the basis of probable cause alone. And, under our precedents, upon arrival at the station house, the police may inventory his possessions, including the briefcase, even if there is no reason to suspect that they contain contraband. Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U. S. 640 (1983). According to our current law, however, the police may not, on the basis of the same probable cause, take the less intrusive step of stopping the individual on the street and demanding to see the contents of his briefcase. That makes no sense a priori, and in the absence of any common-law tradition supporting such a distinction, I see no reason to continue it.

I would reverse the judgment in the present case, not because a closed container carried inside a car becomes subject to the “automobile” exception to the general warrant require*585ment, but because the search of a closed container, outside a privately owned building, with probable cause to believe that the container contains contraband, and when it in fact does contain contraband, is not one of those searches whose Fourth Amendment reasonableness depends upon a warrant. For that reason I concur in the judgment of the Court.

Justice White,

dissenting.

Agreeing as I do with most of Justice Stevens’ opinion and with the result he reaches, I dissent and would affirm the judgment below.

Justice Stevens,

with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.

At the end of its opinion, the Court pays lipservice to the proposition that should provide the basis for a correct analysis of the legal question presented by this case: It is ‘“a cardinal principle that “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.’” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 390 (1978), quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967) (footnotes omitted).” Ante, at 580.

Relying on arguments that conservative judges have repeatedly rejected in past cases, the Court today — despite its disclaimer to the contrary, ibid.— enlarges the scope of the automobile exception to this “cardinal principle,” which un-dergirded our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence prior to the retirement of the author of the landmark opinion in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977). As a preface to my response to the Court’s arguments, it is appropriate to restate the basis for the warrant requirement, the significance of the Chadwick case, and the reasons why the limitations on the automobile exception that were articulated in United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 (1982), represent a fair accom*586modation between the basic rule requiring prior judicial approval of searches and the automobile exception.

► — I

The Fourth Amendment is a restraint on Executive power. The Amendment constitutes the Framers’ direct constitutional response to the unreasonable law enforcement practices employed by agents of the British Crown. See Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 389-391 (1914); Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 624-625 (1886); 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure 3-5 (2d ed. 1987). Over the years—particularly in the period immediately after World War II and particularly in opinions authored by Justice Jackson after his service as a special prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials — the Court has recognized the importance of this restraint as a bulwark against police practices that prevail in totalitarian regimes. See, e. g., United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 595 (1948); Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 17 (1948).

This history is, however, only part of the explanation for the warrant requirement. The requirement also reflects the sound policy judgment that, absent exceptional circumstances, the decision to invade the privacy of an individual’s personal effects should be made by a neutral magistrate rather than an agent of the Executive. In his opinion for the Court in Johnson v. United States, id., at 13-14, Justice Jackson explained:

“The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.”

Our decisions have always acknowledged that the warrant requirement imposes a burden on law enforcement. And our *587cases have not questioned that trained professionals normally make rehable assessments of the existence of probable cause to conduct a search. We have repeatedly held, however, that these factors are outweighed by the individual interest in privacy that is protected by advance judicial approval. The Fourth Amendment dictates that the privacy interest is paramount, no matter how marginal the risk of error might be if the legality of warrantless searches were judged only after the fact.

In the concluding paragraph of his opinion in Chadwick, Chief Justice Burger made the point this way:

“Even though on this record the issuance of a warrant by a judicial officer was reasonably predictable, a line must be drawn. In our view, when no exigency is shown to support the need for an immediate search, the Warrant Clause places the line at the point where the property to be searched comes under the exclusive dominion of police authority. Respondents were therefore entitled to the protection of the Warrant Clause with the evaluation of a neutral magistrate, before their privacy interests in the contents of [their luggage] were invaded.” 433 U. S., at 15-16.

In Chadwick, the Department of Justice had mounted a frontal attack on the warrant requirement. The Government’s principal contention was that “the Fourth Amendment Warrant Clause protects only interests traditionally identified with the home.” Id., at 6. We categorically rejected that contention, relying on the history and text of the Amendment,1 the policy underlying the warrant require*588ment,2 and a line of cases spanning over a century of our jurisprudence.3 We also rejected the Government’s alternative argument that the rationale of our automobile search cases demonstrated the reasonableness of permitting war-rantless searches of luggage.

We concluded that neither of the justifications for the automobile exception could support a similar exception for luggage. We first held that the privacy interest in luggage is “substantially greater than in an automobile.” Id., at 13. Unlike automobiles and their contents, we reasoned, “[l]ug-gage contents are not open to public view, except as a condition to a border entry or common carrier travel; nor is luggage subject to regular inspections and official scrutiny on a continuing basis.” Ibid. Indeed, luggage is specifically intended to safeguard the privacy of personal effects, unlike an automobile, “whose primary function is transportation.” Ibid.

We then held that the mobility of luggage did not justify creating an additional exception to the Warrant Clause. Unlike an automobile, luggage can easily be seized and detained pending judicial approval of a search. Once the police have *589luggage “under their exclusive control, there [i]s not the slightest danger that the [luggage] or its contents could [be] removed before a valid search warrant could be obtained. . . . With the [luggage] safely immobilized, it [i]s unreasonable to undertake the additional and greater intrusion of a search without a warrant” (footnote omitted). Ibid.

Two Terms after Chadwick, we decided a case in which the relevant facts were identical to those before the Court today. In Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 (1979), the police had probable cause to search a green suitcase that had been placed in the trunk of a taxicab at the Little Rock Airport. Several blocks from the airport, they stopped the cab, arrested the passengers, seized the suitcase and, without obtaining a warrant, opened and searched it.

The Arkansas Supreme Court held that the search was unconstitutional. Relying on Chadwick, the state court had no difficulty in concluding that there was “nothing in this set of circumstances that would lend credence to an assertion of impracticability in obtaining a search warrant.” Sanders v. State, 262 Ark. 595, 600, 559 S. W. 2d 704, 706 (1977). Over the dissent of Justice Blackmun and then-JusTiCE Rehnquist, both of whom had also dissented in Chadwick, this Court affirmed. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Powell noted that the seizure of the green suitcase was entirely proper,4 but that the State nevertheless had the burden of justifying the warrantless search,5 and that it had “failed to *590carry its burden of demonstrating the need for warrantless searches of luggage properly taken from automobiles.” 442 U. S., at 763.

Chief Justice Burger wrote separately to identify the distinction between cases in which police have probable cause to believe contraband is located somewhere in a vehicle — the typical automobile exception case — and eases like Chadwick and Sanders in which they had probable cause to search a particular container before it was placed in the car. He wrote:

“Because the police officers had probable cause to believe that respondent’s green suitcase contained marihuana before it was placed in the trunk of the taxicab, their duty to obtain a search warrant before opening it is clear under United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977). The essence of our holding in Chadwick is that there is a legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of a trunk or suitcase accompanying or being carried by a person; that expectation of privacy is not diminished simply because the owner’s arrest occurs in a public place. Whether arrested in a hotel lobby, an airport, a railroad terminal, or on a public street, as here, the owner has the right to expect that the contents of his luggage will not, without his consent, be exposed on demand of the police. . . .

“The breadth of the Court’s opinion and its repeated references to the ‘automobile’ from which respondent’s suitcase was seized at the time of his arrest, however, might lead the reader to believe — as the dissenters apparently do — that this case involves the ‘automobile’ exception to the warrant requirement. See ante, at 762-765, and n. 14. It does not. Here, as in Chadwick, it was the luggage being transported by respondent at *591the time of the arrest, not the automobile in which it was being carried, that was the suspected locus of the contraband.” 442 U. S., at 766-767 (opinion concurring in judgment).

Chief Justice Burger thus carefully explained that Sanders, which the Court overrules today, “simply d[id] not present the question of whether a warrant is required before opening luggage when the police have probable cause to believe contraband is located someiohere in the vehicle, but when they do not know whether, for example, it is inside a piece of luggage in the trunk, in the glove compartment, or concealed in some part of the car’s structure.” Id., at 767. We confronted that question in United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 (1982).6

We held in Ross that “the scope of the warrantless search authorized by [the automobile] exception is no broader and no narrower than a magistrate could legitimately authorize by warrant.” See id., at 825. The inherent mobility of the vehicle justified the immediate search without a warrant, but did not affect the scope of the search. See id., at 822. Thus, the search could encompass containers, which might or might not conceal the object of the search, as well as the remainder of the vehicle. See id., at 821.

Our conclusion was supported not only by prior cases defining the proper scope of searches authorized by warrant, as well as cases involving the automobile exception, but also by practical considerations that apply to searches in which the police have only generalized probable cause to believe that contraband is somewhere in a vehicle. We explained that, in such instances, “prohibiting police from opening immediately a container in which the object of the search is most likely to be found and instead forcing them first to comb the entire vehicle would actually exacerbate the intrusion on privacy in*592terests.” Id., at 821, n. 28. Indeed, because “the police could never be certain that the contraband was not secreted in a yet undiscovered portion of the vehicle,” the most likely result would be that “the vehicle would need to be secured while a warrant was obtained.” Ibid.

These concerns that justified our holding in Ross are not implicated in cases like Chadwick and Sanders in which the police have probable cause to search a particular container rather than the entire vehicle. Because the police can seize the container which is the object of their search, they have no need either to search or to seize the entire vehicle. Indeed, as even the Court today recognizes, they have no authority to do so. See 456 U. S., at 824; ante, at 580.

In reaching our conclusion in Ross, we therefore did not retreat at all from the holding in either Chadwick or Sanders. Instead, we expressly endorsed the reasoning in Chief Justice Burger’s separate opinion in Sanders. 456 U. S., at 813-814.7 We explained repeatedly that Ross involved the scope of the warrantless search authorized by the automobile exception, id., at 800, 809, 817, 825, and, unlike Chadwick and Sanders, did not involve the applicability of the exception to closed containers. 456 U. S., at 809-817.

Thus, we recognized in Ross that Chadwick and Sanders had not created a special rule for container searches, but *593rather had merely applied the cardinal principle that war-rantless searches are per se unreasonable unless justified by an exception to the general rule. See 456 U. S., at 811-812.8 Ross dealt with the scope of the automobile exception; Chadwick and Sanders were cases in which the exception simply did not apply.

II

In its opinion today, the Court recognizes that the police did not have probable cause to search respondent’s vehicle and that a search of anything but the paper bag that respondent had carried from Daza’s apartment and placed in the trunk of his car would have been unconstitutional. Ante, at 580. Moreover, as I read the opinion, the Court assumes that the police could not have made a warrantless inspection of the bag before it was placed in the car. See ibid. Finally, the Court also does not question the fact that, under our prior cases, it would have been lawful for the police to seize the container and detain it (and respondent) until they obtained a search warrant. Ante, at 575. Thus, all of the relevant facts that governed our decisions in Chadwick and Sanders are present here whereas the relevant fact that justified the vehicle search in Ross is not present.

The Court does not attempt to identify any exigent circumstances that would justify its refusal to apply the general rule against warrantless searches. Instead, it advances these three arguments: First, the rules identified in the foregoing cases are confusing and anomalous. Ante, at 576-579. Second, the rules do not protect any significant interest in privacy. Ante, at 573-576. And, third, the rules impede effec*594tive law enforcement. Ante, at 576-577. None of these arguments withstands scrutiny.

The “Confusion”

In the nine years since Ross was decided, the Court has considered three cases in which the police had probable cause to search a particular container and one in which they had probable cause to search two vehicles. The decisions in all four of those cases were perfectly straightforward and provide no evidence of confusion in the state or lower federal courts.

In United States v. Place, 462 U. S. 696 (1983), we held that, although reasonable suspicion justifies the temporary detention of an airline passenger’s luggage, the seizure in that particular case was unreasonable because of the prolonged delay in ascertaining the existence of probable cause. In the course of our opinion, we noted that the then-recent decision in Ross had not modified the holding in Sanders. 462 U. S., at 701, n. 3. We also relied on Chadwick for our conclusion that the temporary seizure of luggage is substantially less intrusive than a search of its contents. 462 U. S., at 706-707.

In Oklahoma v. Castleberry, 471 U. S. 146 (1985), police officers had probable cause to believe the defendant carried narcotics in blue suitcases in the trunk of his car. After arresting him, they opened the trunk, seized the suitcases, and searched them without a warrant. The state court held that the search was invalid, explaining:

“If the officer has probable cause to believe there is contraband somewhere in the car, but he does not know exactly where, he may search the entire car as well as any containers found therein. See United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 . . . (1982); Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, . . . (1970); Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 . . . (1925). If, on the other hand, the officer only has probable cause to believe there is contraband in a *595specific container in the car, he must detain the container and delay his search until a search warrant is obtained. See United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 . . . (1982); Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 . . . (1979); United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 . . . (1977).” Castleberry v. State, 678 P. 2d 720, 724 (Okla. 1984).

This Court affirmed by an equally divided Court. 471 U. S. 146 (1985).

In the case the Court decides today, the California Court of Appeal also had no difficulty applying the critical distinction. Relying on Chadwick, it explained that “the officers had probable cause to believe marijuana would be found only in a brown lunch bag and nowhere else in the car. We are compelled to hold they should have obtained a search warrant before opening it.” 216 Cal. App. 3d 586, 592, 265 Cal. Rptr. 23, 27 (1990).

In the case in which the police had probable cause to search two vehicles, United States v. Johns, 469 U. S. 478 (1985),9 we rejected the respondent’s reliance on Chadwick with a straightforward explanation of why that case, unlike Ross, did not involve an exception to the warrant requirement. We first expressed our agreement with the Court of Appeals that the Customs officers who had conducted the search had *596probable cause to search the vehicles. Id., at 482. We then explained:

“Under the circumstances of this case, respondents’ reliance on Chadwick is misplaced. . . . Chadwick . . . did not involve the exception to the warrant requirement recognized in Carroll v. United States, supra, because the police had no probable cause to believe that the automobile, as contrasted to the footlocker, contained contraband. See 433 U. S., at 11-12. This point is underscored by our decision in Ross, which held that notwithstanding Chadwick police officers may conduct a warrantless search of containers discovered in the course of a lawful vehicle search. See 456 U. S., at 810-814. Given our conclusion that the Customs officers had probable cause to believe that the pickup trucks contained contraband, Chadwick is simply inapposite. See 456 U. S., at 817.” 469 U. S., at 482-483.

The decided cases thus provide no support for the Court’s concern about “confusion.” The Court instead relies primarily on predictions that were made by Justice Blackmun in his dissenting opinions in Chadwick and Sanders. 10 The Court, however, cites no evidence that these predictions have in fact materialized or that anyone else has been unable to understand the “‘inherent opaqueness,”’ ante, at 579, of this uncomplicated issue. The only support offered by the Court, other than the unsubstantiated allegations of prior dissents, is three law review comments and a sentence from Professor LaFave’s treatise. None of the law review pieces *597criticize the holdings in Chadwick and Sanders. 11 The sentence from Professor LaFave’s treatise, at most, indicates that, as is often the case, there may be some factual situations at the margin of the relevant rules that are difficult to decide. Moreover, to the extent Professor LaFave criticizes our jurisprudence in this area, he is critical of Ross rather than Chadwick or Sanders. And he ultimately concludes that even Ross was correctly decided. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure 55-56 (2d ed. 1987).

The Court summarizes the alleged “anomaly” created by the coexistence of Ross, Chadwick, and Sanders with the statement that “the more likely the police are to discover drugs in a container, the less authority they have to search it.” Ante, at 577. This juxtaposition is only anomalous, however, if one accepts the flawed premise that the degree to which the police are likely to discover contraband is correlated with their authority to search without a warrant. Yet, even proof beyond a reasonable doubt will not justify a war-rantless search that is not supported by one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement. And, even when the police have a warrant or an exception applies, once the police possess probable cause, the extent to which they are more or less certain of the contents of a container has no bearing on their authority to search it.

*598To the extent there was any “anomaly” in our prior jurisprudence, the Court has “cured” it at the expense of creating a more serious paradox. • For surely it is anomalous to prohibit a search of a briefcase while the owner is carrying it exposed on a public street yet to permit a search once the owner has placed the briefcase in the locked trunk of his car. One’s privacy interest in one’s luggage can certainly not be diminished by one’s removing it from a public thoroughfare and placing it — out of sight — in a privately owned vehicle. Nor is the danger that evidence will escape increased if the luggage is in a car rather than on the street. In either location, if the police have probable cause, they are authorized to seize the luggage and to detain it until they obtain judicial approval for a search. Any line demarking an exception to the warrant requirement will appear blurred at the edges, but the Court has certainly erred if it believes that, by erasing one line and drawing another, it has drawn a clearer boundary.

The Privacy Argument

The Court’s statement that Chadwick and Sanders provide only “minimal protection to privacy,” ante, at 576, is also unpersuasive. Every citizen clearly has an interest in the privacy of the contents of his or her luggage, briefcase, handbag or any other container that conceals private papers and effects from public scrutiny. That privacy interest has been recognized repeatedly in cases spanning more than a century. See, e. g., Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 6-11; United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U. S. 249, 251 (1970); Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S. 727, 733 (1878).

Under the Court’s holding today, the privacy interest that protects the contents of a suitcase or a briefcase from a war-rantless search when it is in public view simply vanishes when its owner climbs into a taxicab. Unquestionably the rejection of the Sanders line of cases by today’s decision will result in a significant loss of individual privacy.

*599To support its. argument that today’s holding works only a minimal intrusion on privacy, the Court suggests that “[i]f the police know that they may open a bag only if they are actually searching the entire car, they may search more extensively than they otherwise would in order to establish the general probable cause required by Ross.” Ante, at 574-575. As I have already noted, see n. 9, supra, this fear is unexplained and inexplicable. Neither evidence uncovered in the course of a search nor the scope of the search conducted can be used to provide post hoc justification for a search unsupported by probable cause at its inception.

The Court also justifies its claim that its holding inflicts only minor damage by suggesting that, under New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981), the police could have arrested respondent and searched his bag if respondent had placed the bag in the passenger compartment of the automobile instead of in the trunk. In Belton, however, the justification for stopping the car and arresting the driver had nothing to do with the subsequent search, which was based on the potential danger to the arresting officer. The holding in Belton was supportable under a straightforward application of the automobile exception. See Robbins v. California, 453 U. S. 420, 449-453 (1981) (Stevens, J., dissenting). I would not extend Belton’s, holding to this case, in which the container—which was protected from a warrantless search before it was placed in the car—provided the only justification for the arrest. Even accepting Belton’s application to a case like this one, however, the Court’s logic extends its holding to a container placed in the trunk of a vehicle, rather than in the passenger compartment. And the Court makes this extension without any justification whatsoever other than convenience to law enforcement.

The Burden on Law Enforcement

The Court’s suggestion that Chadwick and Sanders have created a significant burden on effective law enforcement *600is unsupported, inaccurate, and, in any event, an insufficient reason for creating a new exception to the warrant requirement.

Despite repeated claims that Chadwick and Sanders have “impeded effective law enforcement,” ante, at 574, 576, the Court cites no authority for its contentions. Moreover, all evidence that does exist points to the contrary conclusion. In the years since Ross was decided, the Court has heard argument in 30 Fourth Amendment cases involving narcotics.12 In all but one, the government was the petitioner.13 All save two involved a search or seizure without a warrant or with a defective warrant.14 And, in all except three, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the search or seizure.15

*601In the meantime, the flow of narcotics cases through the courts has steadily and dramatically increased.16 See Annual Report of the Attorney General of the United States 21 (1989). No impartial observer could criticize this Court for hindering the progress of the war on drugs. On the contrary, decisions like the one the Court makes today will support the conclusion that this Court has become a loyal foot soldier in the Executive’s fight against crime.

Even if the warrant requirement does inconvenience the police to some extent, that fact does not distinguish this constitutional requirement from any other procedural protection secured by the Bill of Rights. It is merely a part of the price that our society must pay in order to preserve its freedom. Thus, in a unanimous opinion that relied on both Johnson and Chadwick, Justice Stewart wrote:

“Moreover, the mere fact that law enforcement may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth Amendment. Cf. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, [403 U. S. 443, 481 (1971)]. The investigation of crime would always be simplified if warrants were unnecessary. But the Fourth Amendment reflects the view of those who wrote the Bill of Rights that the privacy of a person’s home and property may not be totally sacrificed in the name of maximum simplicity in enforcement of the criminal law. See United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 6-11.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S., at 393.

*602It is too early to know how much freedom America has lost today. The magnitude of the loss is, however, not nearly as significant as the Court’s willingness to inflict it without even a colorable basis for its rejection of prior law.

1 respectfully dissent.

OPINION OF THE COURT

[563 U.S. 455]

Justice Alito

delivered the opinion of the Court.

It is well established that “exigent circumstances,” including the need to prevent the destruction of evidence, permit police officers to conduct an otherwise permissible search without first obtaining a warrant. In this case, we consider whether this rule applies when police, by knocking on the door of a residence and announcing their presence, cause the occupants to attempt to destroy evidence. The Kentucky Supreme Court held that the exigent circumstances rule does not apply in the case at hand because the police should have foreseen that their conduct would prompt the occupants to attempt to destroy evidence. We reject this interpretation of the exigent circumstances rule. The conduct of the police prior to their entry into the apartment was entirely lawful. They did not violate the Fourth Amendment or threaten to do so. In such a situation, the exigent circumstances rule applies.

I

A

This case concerns the search of an apartment in Lexington, Kentucky. Police officers set up a controlled buy of crack cocaine outside an apartment complex. Undercover

[563 U.S. 456]

Officer Gibbons watched the deal take place from an unmarked car in a nearby parking lot. After the deal occurred, Gibbons radioed uniformed officers to move in on the suspect. He told the officers that the suspect was moving quickly toward the breezeway of an apartment building, and he urged them to “hurry up and get there” before the suspect entered an apartment. App. 20.

In response to the radio alert, the uniformed officers drove into the nearby parking lot, left their vehicles, and ran to the breezeway. Just as they entered the breezeway, they heard a door shut and detected a very strong odor of burnt marijuana. At the end of the breezeway, the officers saw two apartments, one on the left and one on the right, and they did not know which apartment the suspect had entered. Gibbons had radioed that the suspect was running into the apartment on the right, but the officers did not hear this statement because they had already left their vehicles. Because they smelled marijuana smoke emanating from the apartment on the left, they approached the door of that apartment.

Officer Steven Cobb, one of the uniformed officers who approached the door, testified that the officers banged on the left apartment door “as loud as [they] could” and announced, “ ‘This is the police’ ” or “ ‘Police, police, police.’ ” Id., at 22-23. Cobb said that “[a]s soon as [the officers] started banging on the door,” they “could hear people inside moving,” and “ [i] t sounded as [though] things were being moved inside the apartment.” Id., *873at 24. These noises, Cobb testified, led the officers to believe that drug-related evidence was about to be destroyed.

At that point, the officers announced that they “were going to make entry inside the apartment.” Ibid. Cobb then kicked in the door, the officers entered the apartment, and they found three people in the front room: respondent Hollis King, respondent’s girlfriend, and a guest who was smoking

[563 U.S. 457]

marijuana.1 The officers performed a protective sweep of the apartment during which they saw marijuana and powder cocaine in plain view. In a subsequent search, they also discovered crack cocaine, cash, and drug paraphernalia.

Police eventually entered the apartment on the right. Inside, they found the suspected drug dealer who was the initial target of their investigation.

B

In the Fayette County Circuit Court, a grand jury charged respondent with trafficking in marijuana, first-degree trafficking in a controlled substance, and second-degree persistent felony offender status. Respondent filed a motion to suppress the evidence from the warrantless search, but the Circuit Court denied the motion. The Circuit Court concluded that the officers had probable cause to investigate the marijuana odor and that the officers “properly conducted [the investigation] by initially knocking on the door of the apartment unit and awaiting the response or consensual entry.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 9a. Exigent circumstances justified the war-rantless entry, the court held, because “there was no response at all to the knocking,” and because “Officer Cobb heard movement in the apartment which he reasonably concluded were persons in the act of destroying evidence, particularly narcotics because of the smell.” Ibid. Respondent then entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. The court sentenced respondent to 11 years’ imprisonment.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that exigent circumstances justified the warrantless entry because

[563 U.S. 458]

the police reasonably believed that evidence would be destroyed. The police did not impermis-sibly create the exigency, the court explained, because they did not deliberately evade the warrant requirement.

The Supreme Court of Kentucky reversed. 302 S.W.3d 649 (2010). As a preliminary matter, the court observed that there was “certainly some question as to whether the sound of persons moving [inside the apartment] was sufficient to establish that evidence was being destroyed.” Id., at 655. But the court did not answer that question. Instead, it “assume [d] for the purpose of argument that exigent circumstances existed.” Ibid.

To determine whether police imper-missibly created the exigency, the Supreme Court of Kentucky announced a two-part test. First, the court held, police cannot “deliberately creat[e] the exigent circumstances with the bad faith intent to avoid the warrant *874requirement.” Id., at 656 (internal quotation marks omitted). Second, even absent bad faith, the court concluded, police may not rely on exigent circumstances if “it was reasonably foreseeable that the investigative tactics employed by the police would create the exigent circumstances.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Although the court found no evidence of bad faith, it held that exigent circumstances could not justify the search because it was reasonably foreseeable that the occupants would destroy evidence when the police knocked on the door and announced their presence. Ibid.

We granted certiorari. 561 U.S. 1057, 131 S. Ct. 61, 177 L. Ed. 2d 1150 (2010).2

[563 U.S. 459]

II

A

The Fourth Amendment provides:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The text of the Amendment thus expressly imposes two requirements. First, all searches and seizures must be reasonable. Second, a warrant may not be issued unless probable cause is properly established and the scope of the authorized search is set out with particularity. See Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 584, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639 (1980).

Although the text of the Fourth Amendment does not specify when a search warrant must be obtained, this Court has inferred that a warrant must generally be secured. “It is a ‘basic principle of Fourth Amendment law,’ ” we have often said, “ ‘that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.’ ” Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650 (2006) (quoting Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 559, 124 S. Ct. 1284, 157 L. Ed. 2d 1068 (2004)). But we have also recognized that this presumption may be overcome in some circumstances because “the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is ‘reasonableness.’ ” Brigham City, supra, at 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650; see also Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 47, 130 S. Ct. 546, 175 L. Ed. 2d 410 (2009) (per curiam). Accordingly, the warrant requirement is subject to certain reasonable exceptions. Brigham City, supra, at 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650.

[563 U.S. 460]

One well-recognized exception applies when “ ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a] war-*875rantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 394, 98 S. Ct. 2408, 57 L. Ed. 2d 290 (1978); see also Payton, supra, at 590, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639 (“[T]he Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant”).

This Court has identified several exigencies that may justify a warrant-less search of a home. See Brigham City, 547 U.S., at 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650. Under the “emergency aid” exception, for example, “officers may enter a home without a warrant to render emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent injury.” Ibid.; see also, e.g., Fisher, supra, at 49, 130 S. Ct. 546, 175 L. Ed. 2d 410 (upholding warrant-less home entry based on emergency aid exception). Police officers may enter premises without a warrant when they are in hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect. See United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 42-43, 96 S. Ct. 2406, 49 L. Ed. 2d 300 (1976). And—what is relevant here—the need “to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence” has long been recognized as a sufficient justification for a warrantless search. Brigham City, supra, at 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650; see also Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 116, n. 6, 126 S. Ct. 1515, 164 L. Ed. 2d 208 (2006); Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 100, 110 S. Ct. 1684, 109 L. Ed. 2d 85 (1990).3

[563 U.S. 461]

B

Over the years, lower courts have developed an exception to the exigent circumstances rule, the so-called “police-created exigency” doctrine. Under this doctrine, police may not rely on the need to prevent destruction of evidence when that exigency was “created” or “manufactured” by the conduct of the police. See, e.g., United States v. Chambers, 395 F.3d 563, 566 (CA6 2005) (“[F]or a war-rantless search to stand, law enforcement officers must be responding to an unanticipated exigency rather than simply creating the exigency for themselves”); United States v. Gould, 364 F.3d 578, 590 (CA5 2004) (en banc) (“[A]lthough exigent circumstances may justify a warrantless probable cause entry into the home, they will not do so if the exigent circumstances were manufactured by the agents” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

In applying this exception for the “creation” or “manufacturing” of an exigency by the police, courts require something more than mere proof that fear of detection by the police caused the destruction of evidence. An additional showing is obviously needed because, as the Eighth Circuit has recognized, “in some sense the police *876always create the exigent circumstances.” United States v. Duchi, 906 F.2d 1278, 1284 (1990). That is to say, in the vast majority of cases in which evidence is destroyed by persons who are engaged in illegal conduct, the reason for the destruction is fear that the evidence will fall into the hands of law enforcement. Destruction of evidence issues probably occur most frequently in drug cases because drugs may be easily destroyed by flushing them down a toilet or rinsing them down a drain. Persons in possession of valuable drugs are unlikely to destroy them unless they fear discovery by the police. Consequently, a rule that precludes the police from making a warrantless entry to prevent the destruction of evidence whenever their conduct causes the exigency would

[563 U.S. 462]

unreasonably shrink the reach of this well-established exception to the warrant requirement.

Presumably for the purpose of avoiding such a result, the lower courts have held that the police-created exigency doctrine requires more than simple causation, but the lower courts have not agreed on the test to be applied. Indeed, the petition in this case maintains that “[t]here are currently five different tests being used by the United States Courts of Appeals,” Pet. for Cert. 11, and that some state courts have crafted additional tests, id., at 19-20.

Ill

A

Despite the welter of tests devised by the lower courts, the answer to the question presented in this case follows directly and clearly from the principle that permits warrantless searches in the first place. As previously noted, warrantless searches are allowed when the circumstances make it reasonable, within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, to dispense with the warrant requirement. Therefore, the answer to the question before us is that the exigent circumstances rule justifies a warrantless search when the conduct of the police preceding the exigency is reasonable in the same sense. Where, as here, the police did not create the exigency by engaging or threatening to engage in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment, warrantless entry to prevent the destruction of evidence is reasonable and thus allowed.4

We have taken a similar approach in other cases involving warrantless searches. For example, we have held that law

[563 U.S. 463]

enforcement officers may seize evidence in plain view, provided that they have not violated the Fourth Amendment in arriving at the spot from which the observation of the evidence is made. See Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 136-140, 110 S. Ct. 2301, 110 L. Ed. 2d 112 (1990). As we put it in Horton, “[i]t is ... an essential predicate to any valid war-rantless seizure of incriminating evidence that the officer did not violate the Fourth Amendment in arriving at the place from which the evidence could be plainly viewed.” Id., at 136, 110 S. Ct. 2301, 110 L. Ed. 2d 112. So long as this prerequisite is satisfied, however, it does not matter that the officer who makes the observation *877may have gone to the spot from which the evidence was seen with the hope of being able to view and seize the evidence. See id., at 138, 110 S. Ct. 2301, 110 L. Ed. 2d 112 (“The fact that an officer is interested in an item of evidence and fully expects to find it in the course of a search should not invalidate its seizure”). Instead, the Fourth Amendment requires only that the steps preceding the seizure be lawful. See id., at 136-137, 110 S. Ct. 2301, 110 L. Ed. 2d 112.

Similarly, officers may seek consent-based encounters if they are lawfully present in the place where the consensual encounter occurs. See INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 217, n. 5, 104 S. Ct. 1758, 80 L. Ed. 2d 247 (1984) (noting that officers who entered into consent-based encounters with employees in a factory building were “lawfully present [in the factory] pursuant to consent or a warrant”). If consent is freely given, it makes no difference that an officer may have approached the person with the hope or expectation of obtaining consent. See id., at 216, 104 S. Ct. 1758, 80 L. Ed. 2d 247 (“While most citizens will respond to a police request, the fact that people do so, and do so without being told they are free not to respond, hardly eliminates the consensual nature of the response”).

B

Some lower courts have adopted a rule that is similar to the one that we recognize today. See United States v. MacDonald, 916 F.2d 766, 772 (CA2 1990) (en banc) ( law enforcement officers “do not impermissibly create exigent circumstances”

[563 U.S. 464]

when they “act in an entirely lawful manner”); State v. Robinson, 2010 WI 80, ¶32, 327 Wis. 2d 302, 326-328, 786 N.W.2d 463, 475-476 (2010). But others, including the Kentucky Supreme Court, have imposed additional requirements that are unsound and that we now reject.

Bad faith. Some courts, including the Kentucky Supreme Court, ask whether law enforcement officers “ ‘deliberately created the exigent circumstances with the bad faith intent to avoid the warrant requirement.’ ” 302 S.W.3d, at 656 (quoting Gould, 364 F.3d, at 590); see also, e.g., Chambers, 395 F.3d, at 566; United States v. Socey, 846 F.2d 1439, 1448 (CADC 1988); United States v. Rengifo, 858 F.2d 800, 804 (CA1 1988).

This approach is fundamentally inconsistent with our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. “Our cases have repeatedly rejected” a subjective approach, asking only whether “the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify the action.” Brigham City, 547 U.S., at 404, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650 (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Fisher, 558 U.S., at 47-49, 130 S. Ct. 546, 175 L. Ed. 2d 410. Indeed, we have never held, outside limited contexts such as an “inventory search or administrative inspection ..., that an officer’s motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment.” Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 812, 116 S. Ct. 1769, 135 L. Ed. 2d 89 (1996); see also Brigham City, supra, at 405, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650.

The reasons for looking to objective factors, rather than subjective intent, are clear. Legal tests based on reasonableness are generally objective, and this Court has long taken the view that “evenhanded law enforcement is best achieved by the application of objective standards of conduct, rather than standards that depend upon the *878subjective state of mind of the officer.” Horton, supra, at 138, 110 S. Ct. 2301, 110 L. Ed. 2d 112.

Reasonable foreseeability. Some courts, again including the Kentucky Supreme Court, hold that police may not rely on an exigency if “ ‘it was reasonably foreseeable that the investigative tactics employed by the police would create the

[563 U.S. 465]

exigent circumstances.’ ” 302 S.W.3d, at 656 (quoting Mann v. State, 357 Ark. 159, 172, 161 S.W.3d 826, 834 (2004)); see also, e.g., United States v. Mowatt, 513 F.3d 395, 402 (CA4 2008). Courts applying this test have invalidated warrantless home searches on the ground that it was reasonably foreseeable that police officers, by knocking on the door and announcing their presence, would lead a drug suspect to destroy evidence. See, e.g., id., at 402-403; 302 S.W.3d, at 656.

Contrary to this reasoning, however, we have rejected the notion that police may seize evidence without a warrant only when they come across the evidence by happenstance. In Horton, as noted, we held that the police may seize evidence in plain view even though the officers may be “interested in an item of evidence and fully expec[t] to find it in the course of a search.” 496 U.S., at 138, 110 S. Ct. 2301, 110 L. Ed. 2d 112.

Adoption of a reasonable foreseeability test would also introduce an unacceptable degree of unpredictability. For example, whenever law enforcement officers knock on the door of premises occupied by a person who may be involved in the drug trade, there is some possibility that the occupants may possess drugs and may seek to destroy them. Under a reasonable foreseeability test, it would be necessary to quantify the degree of predictability that must be reached before the police-created exigency doctrine comes into play.

A simple example illustrates the difficulties that such an approach would produce. Suppose that the officers in the present case did not smell marijuana smoke and thus knew only that there was a 50% chance that the fleeing suspect had entered the apartment on the left rather than the apartment on the right. Under those circumstances, would it have been reasonably foreseeable that the occupants of the apartment on the left would seek to destroy evidence upon learning that the police were at the door? Or suppose that the officers knew only that the suspect had disappeared into one of the apartments on a floor with 3, 5, 10, or even 20

[563 U.S. 466]

units? If the police chose a door at random and knocked for the purpose of asking the occupants if they knew a person who fit the description of the suspect, would it have been reasonably foreseeable that the occupants would seek to destroy evidence?

We have noted that “[t]he calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396-397, 109 S. Ct. 1865, 104 L. Ed. 2d 443 (1989). The reasonable foreseeability test would create unacceptable and unwarranted difficulties for law enforcement officers who must make quick decisions in the field, as well as for judges who would be required to determine after the fact whether the destruction of evidence in response to a knock on the door was reasonably foreseeable based on what the officers knew at the time.

Probable cause and time to secure a *879 warrant. Some courts, in applying the police-created exigency doctrine, fault law enforcement officers if, after acquiring evidence that is sufficient to establish probable cause to search particular premises, the officers do not seek a warrant but instead knock on the door and seek either to speak with an occupant or to obtain consent to search. See, e.g., Chambers, supra, at 569 (citing “[t]he failure to seek a warrant in the face of plentiful probable cause” as a factor indicating that the police deliberately created the exigency).

This approach unjustifiably interferes with legitimate law enforcement strategies. There are many entirely proper reasons why police may not want to seek a search warrant as soon as the bare minimum of evidence needed to establish probable cause is acquired. Without attempting to provide a comprehensive list of these reasons, we note a few.

First, the police may wish to speak with the occupants of a dwelling before deciding whether it is worthwhile to seek authorization for a search. They may think that a short and simple conversation may obviate the need to apply for and

[563 U.S. 467]

execute a warrant. See Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 228, 93 S. Ct. 2041, 36 L. Ed. 2d 854 (1973). Second, the police may want to ask an occupant of the premises for consent to search because doing so is simpler, faster, and less burdensome than applying for a warrant. A consensual search also “may result in considerably less inconvenience” and embarrassment to the occupants than a search conducted pursuant to a warrant. Ibid. Third, law enforcement officers may wish to obtain more evidence before submitting what might otherwise be considered a marginal warrant application. Fourth, prosecutors may wish to wait until they acquire evidence that can justify a search that is broader in scope than the search that a judicial officer is likely to authorize based on the evidence then available. And finally, in many cases, law enforcement may not want to execute a search that will disclose the existence of an investigation because doing so may interfere with the acquisition of additional evidence against those already under suspicion or evidence about additional but as yet unknown participants in a criminal scheme.

We have said that “[l]aw enforcement officers are under no constitutional duty to call a halt to criminal investigation the moment they have the minimum evidence to establish probable cause.” Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 310, 87 S. Ct. 408, 17 L. Ed. 2d 374 (1966). Faulting the police for failing to apply for a search warrant at the earliest possible time after obtaining probable cause imposes a duty that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

Standard, or good investigative tactics. Finally, some lower court cases suggest that law enforcement officers may be found to have created or manufactured an exigency if the court concludes that the course of their investigation was “contrary to standard or good law enforcement practices (or to the policies or practices of their jurisdictions).” Gould, 364 F.3d, at 591. This approach fails to provide clear guidance for law enforcement officers and authorizes courts to make judgments on matters that are the province of those

[563 U.S. 468]

who are responsible for federal and state law enforcement agencies.

C

Respondent argues for a rule that *880differs from those discussed above, but his rule is also flawed. Respondent contends that law enforcement officers impermissibly create an exigency when they “engage in conduct that would cause a reasonable person to believe that entry is imminent and inevitable.” Brief for Respondent 24. In respondent’s view, relevant factors include the officers’ tone of voice in announcing their presence and the forcefulness of their knocks. But the ability of law enforcement officers to respond to an exigency cannot turn on such subtleties.

Police officers may have a very good reason to announce their presence loudly and to knock on the door with some force. A forceful knock may be necessary to alert the occupants that someone is at the door. Cf. United States v. Banks, 540 U.S. 31, 33, 124 S. Ct. 521, 157 L. Ed. 2d 343 (2003) (Police “rapped hard enough on the door to be heard by officers at the back door” and announced their presence, but defendant “was in the shower and testified that he heard nothing”). Furthermore, unless police officers identify themselves loudly enough, occupants may not know who is at their doorstep. Officers are permitted—indeed, encouraged—to identify themselves to citizens, and “in many circumstances this is cause for assurance, not discomfort.” United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 204, 122 S. Ct. 2105, 153 L. Ed. 2d 242 (2002). Citizens who are startled by an unexpected knock on the door or by the sight of unknown persons in plain clothes on their doorstep may be relieved to learn that these persons are police officers. Others may appreciate the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether to answer the door to the police.

If respondent’s test were adopted, it would be extremely difficult for police officers to know how loudly they may announce their presence or how forcefully they may knock on a door without running afoul of the police-created exigency

[563 U.S. 469]

rule. And in most cases, it would be nearly impossible for a court to determine whether that threshold had been passed. The Fourth Amendment does not require the nebulous and impractical test that respondent proposes.5

D

For these reasons, we conclude that the exigent circumstances rule ap*881plies when the police do not gain entry to premises by means of an actual or threatened violation of the Fourth Amendment. This holding provides ample protection for the privacy rights that the Amendment protects.

When law enforcement officers who are not armed with a warrant knock on a door, they do no more than any private citizen might do. And whether the person who knocks on the door and requests the opportunity to speak is a police officer or a private citizen, the occupant has no obligation to

[563 U.S. 470]

open the door or to speak. Cf. Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 497-498, 103 S. Ct. 1319, 75 L. Ed. 2d 229 (1983) (“[H]e may decline to listen to the questions at all and may go on his way”). When the police knock on a door but the occupants choose not to respond or to speak, “the investigation will have reached a conspicuously low point,” and the occupants “will have the kind of warning that even the most elaborate security system cannot provide.” Chambers, 395 F.3d, at 577 (Sutton, J., dissenting). And even if an occupant chooses to open the door and speak with the officers, the occupant need not allow the officers to enter the premises and may refuse to answer any questions at any time.

Occupants who choose not to stand on their constitutional rights but instead elect to attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame for the warrantless exigent circumstances search that may ensue.

IV

We now apply our interpretation of the police-created exigency doctrine to the facts of this case.

A

We need not decide whether exigent circumstances existed in this case. Any warrantless entry based on exigent circumstances must, of course, be supported by a genuine exigency. See Brigham City, 547 U.S., at 406, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650. The trial court and the Kentucky Court of Appeals found that there was a real exigency in this case, but the Kentucky Supreme Court expressed doubt on this issue, observing that there was “certainly some question as to whether the sound of persons moving [inside the apartment] was sufficient to establish that evidence was being destroyed.” 302 S.W.3d, at 655. The Kentucky Supreme Court “as-sum[ed] for the purpose of argument that exigent circumstances existed,” ibid., and it held that the police had impermissibly manufactured the exigency.

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We, too, assume for purposes of argument that an exigency existed. We decide only the question on which the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled and on which we granted certiorari: Under what circumstances do police impermissibly create an exigency? Any question about whether an exigency actually existed is better addressed by the Kentucky Supreme Court on remand. See Kirk v. Louisiana, 536 U.S. 635, 638, 122 S. Ct. 2458, 153 L. Ed. 2d 599 (2002) (per curiam) (reversing state-court judgment that exigent circumstances were not required for warrantless home entry and remanding for state court to determine whether exigent circumstances were present).

B

In this case, we see no evidence that the officers either violated the Fourth Amendment or threatened to do so prior to the point when they entered the apartment. Officer Cobb testified without contradiction that the officers *882“banged on the door as loud as [they] could” and announced either “ ‘Police, police, police’ ” or “ ‘This is the police.’ ” App. 22-23. This conduct was entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment, and we are aware of no other evidence that might show that the officers either violated the Fourth Amendment or threatened to do so (for example, by announcing that they would break down the door if the occupants did not open the door voluntarily).

Respondent argues that the officers “demanded” entry to the apartment, but he has not pointed to any evidence in the record that supports this assertion. He relies on a passing statement made by the trial court in its opinion denying respondent’s motion to suppress. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 3a-4a. In recounting the events that preceded the search, the judge wrote that the officers “banged on the door of the apartment on the back left of the breezeway identifying themselves as police officers and demanding that the door be opened by the persons inside.” Ibid. (emphasis added and deleted). However, at a later point in this opinion, the

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judge stated that the officers “initially knock[ed] on the door of the apartment unit and await[ed] the response or consensual entry.” Id., at 9a. This later statement is consistent with the testimony at the suppression hearing and with the findings of the state appellate courts. See 302 S.W.3d, at 651 (The officers “knocked loudly on the back left apartment door and announced ‘police’ ”); App. to Pet. for Cert. 14a (The officers “knock[ed] on the door and announc[ed] themselves as police”); App. 22-24. There is no evidence of a “demand” of any sort, much less a demand that amounts to a threat to violate the Fourth Amendment. If there is contradictory evidence that has not been brought to our attention, the state court may elect to address that matter on remand.

Finally, respondent claims that the officers “explained to [the occupants that the officers] were going to make entry inside the apartment,” id., at 24, but the record is clear that the officers did not make this statement until after the exigency arose. As Officer Cobb testified, the officers “knew that there was possibly something that was going to be destroyed inside the apartment,” and “[a]t that point, . . . [they] explained . . . [that they] were going to make entry.” Ibid. (emphasis added). Given that this announcement was made after the exigency arose, it could not have created the exigency.

Like the court below, we assume for purposes of argument that an exigency existed. Because the officers in this case did not violate or threaten to violate the Fourth Amendment prior to the exigency, we hold that the exigency justified the warrantless search of the apartment.

The judgment of the Kentucky Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

*883SEPARATE OPINION

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Justice Ginsburg,

dissenting.

The Court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant. I dissent from the Court’s reduction of the Fourth Amendment’s force.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees to the people “[t]he right... to be secure in their . . . houses . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Warrants to search, the Amendment further instructs, shall issue only upon a showing of “probable cause” to believe criminal activity is afoot. These complementary provisions are designed to ensure that police will seek the authorization of a neutral magistrate before undertaking a search or seizure. Exceptions to the warrant requirement, this Court has explained, must be “few in number and carefully delineated,” if the main rule is to remain hardy. United States v. United States Dist. Court for Eastern Dist. of Mich., 407 U.S. 297, 318, 92 S. Ct. 2125, 32 L. Ed. 2d 752 (1972); see Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31, 121 S. Ct. 2038, 150 L. Ed. 2d 94 (2001).

This case involves a principal exception to the warrant requirement, the exception applicable in “exigent circumstances.” See ante, at 460, 179 L. Ed. 2d, at 875. “[C]arefully delineated,” the exception should govern only in genuine emergency situations. Circumstances qualify as “exigent” when there is an imminent risk of death or serious in-jury, or danger that evidence will be immediately destroyed, or that a suspect will escape. Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650 (2006). The question presented: May police, who could pause to gain the approval of a neutral magistrate, dispense with the need to get a warrant by themselves creating exigent circumstances? I would answer no, as did the Kentucky Supreme Court. The urgency must exist, I would rule, when the police come on the scene, not subsequent to their arrival, prompted by their own conduct.

[563 U.S. 474]

I

Two pillars of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence should have controlled the Court’s ruling: First, “whenever practical, [the police must] obtain advance judicial approval of searches and seizures through the warrant procedure,” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968); second, unwarranted “searches and seizures inside a home” bear heightened scrutiny, Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639 (1980). The warrant requirement, Justice Jackson observed, ranks among the “fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law.” Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 17, 68 S. Ct. 367, 92 L. Ed. 436 (1948). The Court has accordingly declared warrantless searches, in the main, “per se unreasonable.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 390, 98 S. Ct. 2408, 57 L. Ed. 2d 290 (1978); see also Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 559, 124 S. Ct. 1284, 157 L. Ed. 2d 1068 (2004). “[T]he police bear a heavy burden,” the Court has cautioned, “when *884attempting to demonstrate an urgent need that might justify warrantless searches.” Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 749-750, 104 S. Ct. 2091, 80 L. Ed. 2d 732 (1984).

That heavy burden has not been carried here. There was little risk that drug-related evidence would have been destroyed had the police delayed the search pending a magistrate’s authorization. As the Court recognizes, “[p]ersons in possession of valuable drugs are unlikely to destroy them unless they fear discovery by the police.” Ante, at 461, 179 L. Ed. 2d, at 876. Nothing in the record shows that, prior to the knock at the apartment door, the occupants were apprehensive about police proximity.

In no quarter does the Fourth Amendment apply with greater force than in our homes, our most private space which, for centuries, has been regarded as “ ‘entitled to special protection.’ ” Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 115, and n. 4, 126 S. Ct. 1515, 164 L. Ed. 2d 208 (2006); Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 99, 119 S. Ct. 469, 142 L. Ed. 2d 373 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring). Home intrusions, the Court has said, are indeed “the chief evil against which . . . the Fourth

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Amendment is directed.” Payton, 445 U.S., at 585, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639 (internal quotation marks omitted); see Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 81 S. Ct. 679, 5 L. Ed. 2d 734 (1961) (“At [the Fourth Amendment’s] very core stands the right of a man to retreat to his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.”). “ ‘[S]earches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are [therefore] presumptively unreasonable.’ ” Brigham City, 547 U.S., at 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650 (quoting Groh, 540 U.S., at 559, 124 S. Ct. 1284, 157 L. Ed. 2d 1068). How “secure” do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?

II

As above noted, to justify the police activity in this case, Kentucky invoked the once-guarded exception for emergencies “in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant. . . threaten [s] ‘the destruction of evidence.’ ” Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770, 86 S. Ct. 1826, 16 L. Ed. 2d 908 (1966) (quoting Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367, 84 S. Ct. 881, 11 L. Ed. 2d 777 (1964)). To fit within this exception, “police action literally must be [taken] ‘now or never’ to preserve the evidence of the crime.” Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U.S. 496, 505, 93 S. Ct. 2796, 37 L. Ed. 2d 757 (1973).

The existence of a genuine emergency depends not only on the state of necessity at the time of the warrant-less search; it depends, first and foremost, on “actions taken by the police preceding the warrantless search.” United States v. Coles, 437 F.3d 361, 367 (CA3 2006). See also United States v. Chambers, 395 F.3d 563, 565 (CA6 2005) (“[0]fficers must seek a warrant based on probable cause when they believe in advance they will find contraband or evidence of a crime.”). “[Wjasting a clear opportunity to obtain a warrant,” therefore, “disentitles the officer from relying on subsequent exigent circumstances.” S. Saltzburg & D. Capra, American Criminal Procedure 376 (8th ed. 2007).

Under an appropriately reined-in “emergency” or “exigent circum*885stances” exception, the result in this case should not

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be in doubt. The target of the investigation’s entry into the building, and the smell of marijuana seeping under the apartment door into the hallway, the Kentucky Supreme Court rightly determined, gave the police “probable cause . . . sufficient ... to obtain a warrant to search the ... apartment.” 302 S.W.3d 649, 653 (2010). As that court observed, nothing made it impracticable for the police to post officers on the premises while proceeding to obtain a warrant authorizing their entry. Id., at 654. Before this Court, Kentucky does not urge otherwise. See Brief for Petitioner 35, n. 13 (asserting “[i]t should be of no importance whether police could have obtained a warrant”).

In Johnson, the Court confronted this scenario: standing outside a hotel room, the police smelled burning opium and heard “some shuffling or noise” coming from the room. 333 U.S., at 12, 68 S. Ct. 367, 92 L. Ed. 436 (internal quotation marks omitted). Could the police enter the room without a warrant? The Court answered no. Explaining why, the Court said:

“The right of officers to thrust themselves into a home is ... a grave concern, not only to the individual but to a society which chooses to dwell in reasonable security and freedom from surveillance. When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman ....

“If the officers in this case were excused from the constitutional duty of presenting their evidence to a magistrate, it is difficult to think of [any] case in which [a warrant] should be required.” Id., at 14-15, 68 S. Ct. 367, 92 L. Ed. 436.

I agree, and would not allow an expedient knock to override the warrant requirement.* Instead, I would accord that

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core requirement of the Fourth Amendment full respect. When possible, “a warrant must generally be secured,” the Court acknowledges. Ante, at 459, 179 L. Ed. 2d, at 874. There is every reason to conclude that securing a warrant was entirely feasible in this case, and no reason to contract the Fourth Amendment’s dominion.

Mr. Justice Stewart

delivered the opinion of the Court.

It is well settled under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments that a search conducted without a warrant issued upon probable cause is “per se unreasonable . . . subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357; Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 454-455; Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, 51. It is equally well settled that one of the specifically established exceptions to the requirements of both a warrant and probable cause is a search that is conducted pursuant to consent. Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582, 593-594; Zap v. United States, 328 U. S. 624, 630. The constitutional question in the present case concerns the definition of “consent” in this Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment context.

I

The respondent was brought to trial in a California court upon a charge of possessing a check with intent to defraud.1 He moved to suppress the introduction of certain material as evidence against him on the ground that the material had been acquired through an unconstitutional search and seizure. In response to the motion, the trial judge conducted an evidentiary hearing *220where it was established that the material in question had been acquired by the State under the following circumstances:

While on routine patrol in Sunnyvale, California, at approximately 2:40 in the morning, Police Officer James Rand stopped an automobile when he observed that one headlight and its license plate light were burned out. Six men were in the vehicle. Joe Alcala and the respondent, Robert Bustamonte, were in the front seat with Joe Gonzales, the driver. Three older men were seated in the rear. When, in response to the policeman's question, Gonzales could not produce a driver’s license, Officer Rand asked if any of thé other five had any evidence of identification. Only Alcala produced a license, and he explained that the car was his brother’s. After the six occupants had stepped out of the car at the officer’s request and after two additional policemen had arrived, Officer Rand asked Alcala if he could search the car. Alcala replied, “Sure, go ahead.” Prior to the search no one was threatened with arrest and, according to Officer Rand’s uncontradicted testimony, it “was all very congenial at this time.” Gonzales testified that Alcala actually helped in the search of the car, by opening the trunk and glove compartment. In Gonzales’ words: “[T]he police officer asked Joe [Alcala], he goes, 'Does the trunk open?’ And Joe said, 'Yes.’ He went to the car and got the keys and opened up the trunk.” Wadded up under the left rear seat, the police officers found three checks that had previously been stolen from a car wash.

The trial judge denied the motion to suppress, and the checks in question were admitted in evidence ar Bustamonte’s trial. On the basis of this and other evidence he was convicted, and the California Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District affirmed the convic*221tion. 270 Cal. App. 2d 648, 76 Cal. Rptr. 17. In agreeing that the search and seizure were constitutionally valid, the appellate court applied the standard earlier formulated by the Supreme Court of California in an opinion by then Justice Traynor: “Whether in a particular case an apparent consent was in fact voluntarily given or was in submission to an express or implied assertion of authority, is a question of fact to be determined in the light of all the circumstances.” People v. Michael, 45 Cal. 2d 751, 753, 290 P. 2d 852, 854. The appellate court-found that “[i]n the instant case the prosecution met the necessary burden of showing consent . . . since there were clearly circumstances from which the trial court could ascertain that consent had been freely given without coercion or submission to authority. Not only officer Rand, but Gonzales, the driver of the automobile, testified that Alcala’s assent to the search of his brother’s automobile was freely, even casually given. At the time of the request to search the automobile the atmosphere, according to Rand, was ‘congenial’ and there had been no discussion of any crime. As noted, Gonzales said Alcala even attempted to aid in the search.” 270 Cal. App. 2d, at 652, 76 Cal. Rptr., at 20. The California Supreme Court denied review.2

Thereafter, the respondent sought a writ of habeas corpus in a federal district court. It was denied.3 On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, relying on its prior decisions in Ciprés v. United States, 343 F. 2d 95, and Schoepflin v. United States, 391 F. 2d 390, set aside the District Court’s order. 448 F. 2d 699. The appellate court reasoned that a consent was a waiver of a person’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and that the State was under an obligation to demon*222strate, not only that the consent had been uncoerced, but that it had been given with an understanding that it could be freely and effectively withheld. Consent could not be found, the court held, solely from the absence of coercion and a verbal expression of assent. Since the District Court had not determined that Alcala had known that his consent could have been withheld and that he could have refused to have his vehicle searched, the Court of Appeals vacated the order denying the writ and remanded the case for further proceedings. We granted certiorari to determine whether the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments require the showing thought necessary by the Court of Appeals. 405 U. S. 953.

II

It is important to make it clear at the outset what is not involved in this case. The respondent concedes that a search conducted pursuant to a valid consent is constitutionally permissible. In Katz v. United States, 389 U. S., at 358, and more recently in Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U. S. 30, 35, we recognized that a search authorized by consent is wholly valid. See also Davis v. United States, 328 U. S., at 593-594; Zap v. United States, 328 U. S., at 630.4 And similarly the State concedes that “[w]hen a prosecutor seeks to rely upon consent to justify the lawfulness of a search, he has the burden of proving that the consent was, in fact, freely and voluntarily given1.” Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U. S. 543, 548. See also Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10; Amos v. United States, 255 U. S. 313.

*223The precise question in this case, then, is what must the prosecution prove to demonstrate that a consent was “voluntarily” given. And upon that question there is a square conflict of views between the state and federal courts that have reviewed the search involved in the case before us. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that it is an essential part of the State’s initial burden to prove that a person knows he has a right to refuse consent. The California courts have followed the rule that voluntariness is a question of fact to be determined from the totality of all the circumstances, and that the state of a defendant’s knowledge is only one factor to be taken into account in assessing the voluntariness of a consent. See, e. g., People v. Tremayne, 20 Cal. App. 3d 1006, 98 Cal. Rptr. 193; People v. Roberts, 246 Cal. App. 2d 715, 55 Cal. Rptr. 62.

A

The most extensive judicial exposition of the meaning of “voluntariness” has been developed in those cases in which the Court has had to determine the “voluntariness” of a defendant’s confession for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. Almost 40 years ago, in Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278, the Court held that a criminal conviction based upon a confession obtained by brutality and violence was constitutionally invalid under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In some 30 different cases decided during the era that intervened between Brown and Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478, the Court was faced with the necessity of determining whether in fact the confessions in issue had been “voluntarily” given.5 It is to that body *224of case law to which we turn for initial guidance on the meaning of “voluntariness” in the present context.6

Those cases yield no talismanic definition of “volun-tariness,” mechanically applicable to the host of situations where the question has arisen. “The notion of ‘voluntariness,’ ” Mr. Justice Frankfurter once wrote, “is itself an amphibian.” Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 604-605. It cannot be taken literally to mean a “knowing” choice. “Except where a person is unconscious or drugged or otherwise lacks capacity for conscious choice, all incriminating statements — even those made under brutal treatment — are ‘voluntary’ in the sense of representing a choice of alternatives. On the other hand, if ‘voluntariness’ incorporates notions of ‘but-for’ cause, the question should be whether the statement would have been made even absent inquiry or other official action. Under such a test, virtually no statement would be voluntary because very few people give incriminating statements in the absence of official action of some kind.” 7 It is thus evident that neither linguistics nor epistemology will provide a ready definition of the meaning of “voluntariness.”

Rather, “voluntariness” has reflected an accommodation of the complex of values implicated in police ques*225tioning of a suspect. At one end of the spectrum is the acknowledged need for police questioning as a tool for the effective enforcement of criminal laws. See Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, at 578-580. Without such investigation, those who were innocent might be falsely accused, those who were guilty might wholly escape prosecution, and many crimes would go unsolved. In short, the security of all would be diminished. Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503, 515. At the other end of the spectrum is the set of values reflecting society’s deeply felt belief that the criminal law cannot be used as an instrument of unfairness, and that the possibility of unfair and even brutal police tactics poses a real and serious threat to civilized notions of justice. “[I]n cases involving involuntary confessions, this Court enforces the strongly felt attitude of our society that important human values are sacrificed where an agency of the government, in the course of securing a conviction, wrings a confession out of an accused against his will.” Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, 206-207. See also Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, at 581-584; Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227, 235-238.

This Court’s decisions reflect a frank recognition that the Constitution requires the sacrifice of neither security nor liberty. The Due Process Clause does not mandate that the police forgo all questioning, or that they be given carte blanche to extract what they can from a suspect. “The ultimate test remains that which has been the only clearly established test in Anglo-American courts for two hundred years: the test of voluntariness. Is the confession the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice by its maker? If it is, if he has willed to confess, it may be used against him. If it is not, if his will has been overborne and his capacity for self-determination critically impaired, the use of his *226confession offends due process.” Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, at 602.

In determining whether a defendant’s will was overborne in a particular case, the Court has assessed the totality of all the surrounding circumstances — both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation. Some of the factors taken into account have included the youth of the accused, e. g., Haley v. Ohio, 332 U. S. 596; his lack of education, e. g., Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560; or his low intelligence, e. g., Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U. S. 191; the lack of any advice to the accused of his constitutional rights, e. g., Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U. S. 737; the length of detention, e. g., Chambers v. Florida, supra; the repeated and prolonged nature of the questioning, e. g., Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143; and the use of physical punishment such as the deprivation of food or sleep, e. g., Reck v. Pate, 367 U. S. 433.8 In all of these cases, the Court determined the factual circumstances surrounding the confession, assessed the psychological impact on the accused, and evaluated the legal significance of how the accused reacted. Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, at 603.

The significant fact about all of these decisions is that none of them turned on the presence or absence of a single controlling criterion; each reflected a careful scrutiny of all the surrounding circumstances. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 508 (Harlan, J., dissenting) ; id., at 534-535 (White, J., dissenting). In none of them did the Court rule that the Due Process Clause required the prosecution to prove as part of its *227initial burden that the defendant knew he had a right to refuse to answer the questions that were put. While the state of the accused's mind, and the failure of the police to advise the accused of his rights, were certainly factors to be evaluated in assessing the “voluntariness” of an accused's responses, they were not in and of themselves determinative. See, e. g., Davis v. North Carolina, supra; Haynes v. Washington, supra, at 510-511; Culombe v. Connecticut, supra, at 610; Turner v. Pennsylvania, 338 U. S. 62, 64.

B

Similar considerations lead us to agree with the courts of California that the question whether a consent to a search was in fact “voluntary” or was the product of duress or coercion, express or implied, is a question of fact to be determined from the totality of all the circumstances. While knowledge of the right to refuse consent is one factor to be taken into account, the government need not establish such knowledge as the sine qua non of an effective consent. As with police questioning, two competing concerns must be accommodated in determining the meaning of a “voluntary” consent — the legitimate need for such searches and the equally important requirement of assuring the absence of coercion.

In situations where the police have some evidence of illicit activity, but lack probable cause to arrest or search, a search authorized by a valid consent may be the only means of obtaining important and reliable evidence.9 In the present case for example, while the police had reason to stop the car for traffic violations, the State does not contend that there was probable cause to search the vehicle or that the search was incident to a valid arrest *228of any of the occupants.10 Yet, the search yielded tangible evidence that served as a basis for a prosecution, and provided some assurance that others, wholly innocent of the crime, were not mistakenly brought to trial. And in those cases where there is probable cause to arrest or search, but where the police lack a warrant, a consent search may still be valuable. If the search is conducted and proves fruitless, that in itself may convince the police that an arrest with its possible stigma and embarrassment is unnecessary, or that a far more extensive search pursuant to a warrant is not justified. In short, a search pursuant to consent may result in considerably less inconvenience for the subject of the search, and, properly conducted, is a constitutionally permissible and wholly legitimate aspect of effective police activity.

But the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments require that a consent not be coerced, by explicit or implicit means, by implied threat.or covert force. For, no matter how subtly the coercion was applied, the resulting “consent” would be no more than a pretext for the unjustified police intrusion against which the Fourth Amendment is directed. In the words of the classic admonition in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 635:

“It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be obviated by adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close *229and literal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon.”

The problem of reconciling the recognized legitimacy of consent searches with the requirement that they be free from any aspect of official coercion cannot be resolved by any infallible touchstone. To approve such searches without the most careful scrutiny would sanction the possibility of official coercion; to place artificial restrictions upon such searches would jeopardize their basic validity. Just as was true with confessions, the requirement of a “voluntary” consent reflects a fair accommodation of the constitutional requirements involved. In examining all the surrounding circumstances to determine if in fact the consent to search was coerced, account must be taken of subtly coercive police questions, as well as the possibly vulnerable subjective state of the person who consents. Those searches that are the product of police coercion can thus be filtered out without undermining the continuing validity of consent searches. In sum, there is no reason for us to depart in the area of consent searches, from the traditional definition of “voluntariness.”

The approach of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit finds no support in any of our decisions that have attempted to define the meaning of “voluntariness.” Its ruling, that the State must affirmatively prove that the subject of the search knew that he had a right to refuse consent, would, in practice, create serious doubt whether consent searches could continue to be conducted. There might be rare cases where it could be proved from the record that a person in fact affirmatively knew of his *230right to refuse — such as a case where he announced to the police that if he didn't sign the consent form, “you [police] are going to get a search warrant;” 11 or a case where by prior experience and training a person had clearly and convincingly demonstrated such knowledge.12 But more commonly where there was no evidence of any coercion, explicit or implicit, the prosecution would nevertheless be unable to demonstrate that the subject of the search in fact had known of his right to refuse consent.

The very object of the inquiry — the nature of a person's subjective understanding — underlines the difficulty of the prosecution's burden under the rule applied by the Court of Appeals in this case. Any defendant who was the subject of a search authorized solely by his consent could effectively frustrate the introduction into evidence of the fruits of that search by simply failing to testify that he in fact knew he could refuse to consent. And the near impossibility of meeting this prosecutorial burden suggests why this Court has never accepted any such litmus-paper test of voluntariness. It is instructive to recall the fears of then Justice Traynor of the California Supreme Court:

“[I]t is not unreasonable for officers to seek interviews with suspects or witnesses or to call upon them at their homes for such purposes. Such inquiries, although courteously made and not accompanied with any assertion of a right to enter or search or secure answers, would permit the criminal to defeat his prosecution by voluntarily revealing all of the evidence against him and then contending that he acted only in response to an implied assertion of *231unlawful authority.” People v. Michael, 45 Cal. 2d, at 754, 290 P. 2d, at 854.

One alternative that would go far toward proving that the subject of a search did know he had a right to refuse consent would be to advise him of that right before eliciting his consent. That, however, is a suggestion that has been almost universally repudiated by both federal13 and state courts,14 and, we think, rightly so. For it would be thoroughly impractical to impose on the normal consent search the detailed requirements of an effective warning. Consent searches are part of the standard investigatory techniques of law enforcement *232agencies. They normally occur on the highway, or in a person’s home or office, and under informal and unstructured conditions. The circumstances that prompt the initial request to search may develop quickly or be a logical extension of investigative police questioning. The police may seek to investigate further suspicious circumstances or to follow up leads developed in questioning persons at the scene of a crime. These situations are a far cry from the structured atmosphere of a trial where, assisted by counsel if he chooses, a defendant is informed of his trial rights. Cf. Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U. S. 238, 243. And, while surely a closer question, these situations are still immeasurably far removed from “custodial interrogation” where, in Miranda v. Arizona, supra, we found that the Constitution required certain now familiar warnings as a prerequisite to police interrogation. Indeed, in language applicable to the typical consent search, we refused to extend the need for warnings:

“Our decision is not intended to hamper the traditional function of police officers in investigating crime. . . . When an individual is in custody on probable cause, the police may, of course, seek out evidence in the field to be used at trial against him. Such investigation may include inquiry of persons not under restraint. General on-the-scene questioning as to facts surrounding a crime or other general questioning of citizens in the fact-finding process is not affected by our holding. It is an act of responsible citizenship for individuals to give whatever information they may have to aid in law enforcement.” 384 U. S., at 477-478.

Consequently, we cannot accept the position of the Court of Appeals in this case that proof of knowledge of the right to refuse consent is a necessary prerequisite *233to demonstrating a “voluntary” consent. Rather, it is only by analyzing all the circumstances of an individual consent that it can be ascertained whether in fact it was voluntary or coerced. It is this careful sifting of the unique facts and circumstances of each case that is evidenced in our prior decisions involving consent searches.

For example, in Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582, federal agents enforcing wartime gasoline-rationing regulations, arrested a filling station operator and asked to see his rationing coupons. He eventually unlocked a room where the agents discovered the coupons that formed the basis for his conviction. The District Court found that the petitioner had consented to the search — that although he had at first refused to turn the coupons over, he had soon been persuaded to do so and that force or threat of force had not been employed to persuade him. Concluding that it could not be said that this finding was erroneous, this Court, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Douglas that looked to all the circumstances surrounding the consent, affirmed the judgment of conviction: “The public character of the property, the fact that the demand was made during business hours at the place of business where the coupons were required to be kept, the existence of the right to inspect, the nature of the request, the fact that the initial refusal to turn the coupons over was soon followed by acquiescence in the demand — these circumstances all support the conclusion of the District Court.” Id., at 593-594. See also Zap v. United States, 328 U. S. 624.

Conversely, if under all the circumstances it has appeared that the consent was not given voluntarily — that it was coerced by threats or force, or granted only in submission to a claim of lawful authority — then we have found the consent invalid and the search unreasonable. See, e. g., Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U. S., at 548-549; Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10; Amos v. *234 United States, 255 U. S. 313. In Bumper, a 66-year-old Negro widow, who lived in a house located in a rural area at the end of an isolated mile-long dirt road, allowed four white law enforcement officials to search her home after they asserted they had a warrant to search the house. We held the alleged consent to be invalid, noting that “[w]hen a law enforcement officer claims authority to search a home under a warrant, he announces in effect that the occupant has no right to resist the search. The situation is instinct with coercion — albeit colorably lawful coercion. Where there is coercion there cannot be consent.” 391 U. S., at 550.

Implicit in all of these cases is the recognition that knowledge of a right to refuse is not a prerequisite of a voluntary consent. If the prosecution were required to demonstrate such knowledge, Davis and Zap could not have found consent without evidence of that knowledge. And similarly if the failure to prove such knowledge were sufficient to show an ineffective consent, the Amos, Johnson, and Bumper opinions would surely have focused upon the subjective mental state of the person who consented. Yet they did not.

In short, neither this Court’s prior cases, nor the traditional definition of “voluntariness” requires proof of knowledge of a right to refuse as the sine qua non of an effective consent to a search.15

*235c

It is said, however, that a “consent” is a “waiver” of a person’s rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The argument is that by allowing the police to conduct a search, a person “waives” whatever right he had to prevent the police from searching. It is argued that under the doctrine of Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464, to establish such a “waiver” the State must demonstrate “an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.”

But these standards were enunciated in Johnson in the context of the safeguards of a fair criminal trial. Our cases do not reflect an uncritical demand for a knowing and intelligent waiver in every situation where a person has failed to invoke a constitutional protection. As Mr. Justice Black once observed for the Court: “ 'Waiver’ is a vague term used for a great variety of purposes, good and bad, in the law.” Green v. United States, 355 U. S. 184, 191. With respect to procedural due process, for example, the Court has acknowledged that waiver is possible, while explicitly leaving open the question whether a “knowing and intelligent” waiver need be shown.16 See D. H. Overmyer Co. v. Frick Co., *236405 U. S. 174, 185-186; Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 TJ. S. 67, 9A-96.17

The requirement of a “knowing” and “intelligent” waiver was articulated in a case involving the validity of a defendant’s decision to forgo a right constitutionally guaranteed to protect a fair trial and the reliability of the truth-determining process. Johnson v. Zerbst, supra, dealt with the denial of counsel in a federal criminal trial. There the Court held that under the Sixth Amendment a criminal defendant is entitled to the assistance of counsel, and that if he lacks sufficient funds to retain counsel, it is the Government’s obligation to furnish him with a lawyer. As Mr. Justice Black wrote for the Court: “The Sixth Amendment stands as a constant admonition that if the constitutional safeguards it provides be lost, justice will not ‘still be done.’ It embodies a realistic recognition of the obvious truth that the average defendant does not have the professional legal skill to protect himself when brought before a tribunal with power to take his life or liberty, wherein the prosecution is presented by experienced and learned counsel. That which is simple, orderly and necessary to the lawyer, to the untrained layman may appear intricate, complex and mysterious.” 304 TJ. S., at 462-463 (footnote omitted). To preserve the fairness of the trial process the Court established an appropriately heavy burden on the Government before waiver could be found — “an in*237tentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.” Id., at 464.

Almost without exception, the requirement of a knowing and intelligent waiver has been applied only to those rights which the Constitution guarantees to a criminal defendant in order to preserve a fair trial.18 Hence, and hardly surprisingly in view of the facts of Johnson itself, the standard of a knowing and intelligent waiver has most often been applied to test the validity of a waiver of counsel, either at trial,19 or upon a guilty plea.20 And the Court has also applied the Johnson criteria to assess the effectiveness of a waiver of other trial rights such as the right to confrontation,21 to a jury trial,22 and to a speedy trial,23 and the right to be free from *238twice being placed in jeopardy.24 Guilty pleas have been carefully scrutinized to determine whether the accused knew and understood all the rights to which he would be entitled at trial, and that he had intentionally chosen to forgo them.25 And the Court has evaluated the knowing and intelligent nature of the waiver of trial rights in trial-type situations, such as the waiver of the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination before an administrative agency26 or a congressional committee,27 or the waiver of counsel in a juvenile proceeding.28

The guarantees afforded a criminal defendant at trial also protect him at certain stages before the actual trial, and any alleged waiver must meet the strict standard of an intentional relinquishment of a “known” right. But the “trial” guarantees that have been applied to the “pre*239trial” stage of the criminal process are similarly designed to protect the fairness of the trial itself.

Hence, in United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, and Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263, the Court held “that a post-indictment pretrial lineup at which the accused is exhibited to identifying witnesses is a critical stage of the criminal prosecution; that police conduct of such a lineup without notice to and in the absence of his counsel denies the accused his Sixth [and Fourteenth] Amendment right to counsel . . . Id., at 272. Accordingly, the Court indicated that the standard of a knowing and intelligent waiver must be applied to test the waiver of counsel at such a lineup. See United States v. Wade, supra, at 237. The Court stressed the necessary interrelationship between the presence of counsel at a post-indictment lineup before trial and the protection of the trial process itself:

“Insofar as the accused's conviction may rest on a courtroom identification in fact the fruit of a suspect pretrial identification which the accused is helpless to subject to effective scrutiny at trial, the accused is deprived of that right of cross-examination which is an essential safeguard to his right to confront the witnesses against him. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400. And even though cross-examination is a precious safeguard to a fair trial, it cannot be viewed as an absolute assurance of accuracy and reliability. Thus in the present context, where so many variables and pitfalls exist, the first line of defense must be the prevention of unfairness and the lessening of the hazards of eyewitness identification at the lineup itself. The trial which might determine the accused’s fate may well not be that in the courtroom but that at the pretrial confrontation, with the State aligned against the accused, the *240witness the sole jury, and the accused unprotected against the overreaching, intentional or unintentional, and with little or no effective appeal from the judgment there rendered by the witness — ‘that's the man.’ ” Id., at 235-236.

And in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, the Court found that custodial interrogation by the police was inherently coercive, and consequently held that detailed warnings were required to protect the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. The Court made it clear that the basis for decision was the need to protect the fairness of the trial itself:

“That counsel is present when statements are taken from an individual during interrogation obviously enhances the integrity of the fact-finding processes in court. The presence of an attorney, and the warnings delivered to the individual, enable the defendant under otherwise compelling circumstances to tell his story without fear, effectively, and in a way that eliminates the evils in the interrogation process. Without the protections flowing from adequate warnings and the rights of counsel, ‘all the careful safeguards erected around the giving of testimony, whether by an accused or any other witness, would become empty formalities in a procedure where the most compelling possible evidence of guilt, a confession, would have already been obtained at the unsupervised pleasure of the police.’ ” Id., at 466.

The standards of Johnson were, therefore, found to be a necessary prerequisite to a finding of a valid waiver. See 384 U. S., at 475-479. Cf. Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S., at 490 n. 14.29

*241There is a vast difference between those rights that protect a fair criminal trial and the rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. Nothing, either in the purposes behind requiring a “knowing” and “intelligent” waiver of trial rights, or in the practical application of such a requirement suggests that it ought to be extended to the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.

A strict standard of waiver has been applied to those rights guaranteed to a criminal defendant to insure that he will be accorded the greatest possible opportunity to utilize every facet of the constitutional model of a fair criminal trial. Any trial conducted in derogation of that model leaves open the possibility that the trial reached an unfair result precisely because all the protections specified in the Constitution were not provided. A prime example is the right to counsel. For without that right, a wholly innocent accused faces the real and substantial danger that simply because of his lack of legal expertise he may be convicted. As Mr. Justice Harlan once wrote: “The sound reason why [the right to counsel] is so freely extended for a criminal trial is the severe injustice risked by confronting an untrained defendant with a range of technical points of law, evidence, and tactics familiar to the prosecutor but not to *242himself.” Miranda v. Arizona, supra, at 514 (dissenting opinion). The Constitution requires that every effort be made to see to it that a defendant in a criminal case has not unknowingly relinquished the basic protections that the Framers thought indispensable to a fair trial.30

The protections of the Fourth Amendment are of a wholly different order, and have nothing whatever to do with promoting the fair ascertainment of truth at a criminal trial. Rather, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s opinion for the Court put it in Wolf v. Colorado,, 338 U. S. 25, 27, the Fourth Amendment protects the “security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police . . . .” In declining to apply the exclusionary rule of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, to convictions that had become final before rendition of that decision, the Court emphasized that “there is no likelihood of unreliability or coercion present in a search-and-seizure case,” Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618, 638. In Link-letter, the Court indicated that those cases that had been given retroactive effect went to “the fairness of the trial — the very integrity of the fact-finding process. Here . . . the fairness of the trial is not under attack.” Id., at 639. The Fourth Amendment “is not an adjunct to the ascertainment of truth.” The guarantees of the Fourth Amendment stand “as a protection of quite different constitutional values — values reflecting the concern of our society for the right of each individual to be let alone. To recognize this is no more than to accord those values undiluted respect.” Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott, 382 U. S. 406, 416.

Nor can it even be said that a search, as opposed to an eventual trial, is somehow “unfair” if a person consents to a search. While the Fourth and Fourteenth *243Amendments limit the circumstances under which the police can conduct a search, there is nothing constitutionally suspect in a person’s voluntarily allowing a search. The actual conduct of the search may be precisely the same as if the police had obtained a warrant. And, unlike those constitutional guarantees that protect a defendant at trial, it cannot be said every reasonable presumption ought to be indulged against voluntary relinquishment. We have only recently stated: “[I]t is no part of the policy underlying the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to discourage citizens from aiding to the utmost of their ability in the apprehension of criminals.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S., at 488. Rather, the community has a real interest in encouraging consent, for the resulting search may yield necessary evidence for the solution and prosecution of crime, evidence that may insure that a wholly innocent person is not wrongly charged with a criminal offense.

Those cases that have dealt with the application of the Johnson v. Zerbst rule make clear that it would be next to impossible to apply to a consent search the standard of “an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.” 31 To be true to Johnson *244and its progeny, there must be examination into the knowing and understanding nature of the waiver, an examination that was designed for a trial judge in the structured atmosphere of a courtroom. As the Court expressed it in Johnson:

"The constitutional right of an accused to be represented by counsel invokes, of itself, the protection of a trial court, in which the accused — whose life or liberty is at stake — is without counsel. This protecting duty imposes the serious and weighty responsibility upon the trial judge of determining whether there is an intelligent and competent waiver by the accused. While an accused may waive the right to counsel, whether there is a proper waiver should be clearly determined by the trial court, and it would be fitting and appropriate for that determination to appear upon the record.” 304 U. S., at 465.32

*245It would be unrealistic to expect that in the informal, unstructured context of a consent search, a policeman, upon pain of tainting the evidence obtained, could make the detailed type of examination demanded by Johnson. And, if for this reason a diluted form of “waiver” were found acceptable, that would itself be ample recognition of the fact that there is no universal standard that must be applied in every situation where a person forgoes a constitutional right.33

Similarly, a “waiver” approach to consent searches would be thoroughly inconsistent with our decisions that have approved “third party consents.” In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S., at 487-490, where a wife surrendered to the police guns and clothing belonging to her husband, we found nothing constitutionally impermissible in the admission of that evidence at trial since the wife had not been coerced. Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731, 740, held that evidence seized from the defendant's duffel bag in a search authorized by his cousin’s consent was admissible at trial. We found that the defendant had assumed the risk that his cousin, with whom he shared the bag, would allow the police to search it. See also Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217. And *246in Hill v. California, 401 U. S. 797, 802-805, we held that the police had validly seized evidence from the petitioner’s apartment incident to the arrest of a third party, since the police had probable cause to arrest the petitioner and reasonably, though mistakenly, believed the man they had arrested was he. Yet it is inconceivable that the Constitution could countenance the waiver of a defendant’s right to counsel by a third party, or that a waiver could be found because a trial judge reasonably, though mistakenly, believed a defendant had waived his right to plead not guilty.34

In short, there is nothing in the purposes or application of the waiver requirements of Johnson v. Zerbst that justifies, much less compels, the easy equation of a knowing waiver with a consent search. To make such an equation is to generalize from the broad rhetoric of some of our decisions, and to ignore the substance of the differing constitutional guarantees. We decline to follow what one judicial scholar has termed “the domino method of constitutional adjudication . . . wherein every explanatory statement in a previous opinion is made the basis for extension to a wholly different situation.” 35

D

Much of what has already been said disposes of the argument that the Court’s decision in the Miranda case requires the conclusion that knowledge of a right to refuse is an indispensable element of a valid consent. The considerations that informed the Court’s holding in Miranda are simply inapplicable in the present case. *247In Miranda the Court found that the techniques of police questioning and the nature of custodial surroundings produce an inherently coercive situation. The Court concluded that “[ujnless adequate protective devices are employed to dispel the compulsion inherent in custodial surroundings, no statement obtained from the defendant can truly be the product of his free choice.” 384 U. S., at 458. And at another point the Court noted that “without proper safeguards the process of in-custody interrogation of persons suspected or accused of crime contains inherently compelling pressures which work to undermine the individual’s will to resist and to compel him to speak where he would not otherwise do so freely.” Id., at 467.

In this case, there is no evidence of any inherently coercive tactics — either from the nature of the police questioning or the environment in which it took place. Indeed, since consent searches will normally occur on a person’s own familiar territory, the specter of incommunicado police interrogation in some remote station house is simply inapposite.36 There is no reason to believe, under circumstances such as are present here, that the response to a policeman’s question is presumptively coerced; and there is, therefore, no reason to reject the traditional test for determining the voluntariness of a person’s response. Miranda, of course, did not reach investigative questioning of a person not in custody, which is most directly analogous to the situation of a consent search, and it assuredly did not indicate that such questioning ought to be deemed inherently coercive. See su-pra, at 232.

It is also argued that the failure to require the Government to establish knowledge as a prerequisite to a valid *248consent, will relegate the Fourth Amendment to the special province of “the sophisticated, the knowledgeable and the privileged.” We cannot agree. The traditional definition of voluntariness we accept today has always taken into account evidence of minimal schooling, low intelligence, and the lack of any effective warnings to a person of his,rights; and the voluntariness of any statement taken under those conditions has been carefully scrutinized to determine whether it was in fact voluntarily given.37

E

Our decision today is a narrow one. We hold only that when the subject of a search is not in custody and the State attempts to justify a search on the basis of his consent, the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments require that it demonstrate that the consent was in fact voluntarily given, and not the result of duress or coercion, express or implied. Voluntariness is a question of fact *249to be determined from all the circumstances, and while the subject’s knowledge of a right to refuse is a factor to be taken into account, the prosecution is not required to demonstrate such knowledge as a prerequisite to establishing a voluntary consent.38 Because the California court followed these principles in affirming the respondent’s conviction, and because the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in remanding for an evidentiary hearing required more, its judgment must be reversed.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice Blackmun,

concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion and its judgment.

At the time Kaufman v. United States, 394 U. S. 217 (1969), was decided, I, as a member of the Court of Appeals (but not of its panel) whose order was there reversed, found myself in agreement with the views expressed by Mr. Justice Harlan, writing for himself and my Brother Stewart in dissent. Id., at 242. My attitude has not changed in the four years that have passed since Kaufman was decided.

Although I agree with nearly all that Mr. Justice Powell has to say in his detailed and persuasive concurring opinion, post, p. 250, I refrain from joining it at this time because, as Mr. Justice Stewart’s opinion reveals, it is not necessary to reconsider Kaufman in order to decide the present case.

*250Mr. Justice Powell,

with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join, concurring.

While I join the opinion of the Court, it does not address what seems to me the overriding issue briefed and argued in this case: the extent to which federal habeas corpus should be available to a state prisoner seeking to exclude evidence from an allegedly unlawful search and seizure. I would hold that federal collateral review of a state prisoner’s Fourth Amendment claims — claims which rarely bear on innocence — should be confined solely to the question of,whether the petitioner was provided a fair opportunity to raise and have adjudicated the question in state courts. In view of the importance of this issue to our system of criminal justice, I think it appropriate to express my views.

I

Although petitions for federal habeas corpus assert a wide variety of constitutional questions, we are concerned in this case only with a Fourth Amendment claim that an unlawful search occurred and that the state court erred in failing to exclude the evidence obtained therefrom. A divided court in Kaufman v. United States, 394 U. S. 217 (1969), held that collateral review of search-and-seizure claims was appropriate on motions filed by federal prisoners under 28 U. S. C. § 2255. Until Kaufman, a substantial majority of the federal courts of appeals had considered that claims of unlawful search and seizure “ 'are not proper matters to be presented by a motion to vacate sentence under § 2255 ....’” Id., at 220. The rationale of this view was fairly summarized by the Court:

“The denial of Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Gov*251ernment’s argument runs, is of a different nature from denials of other constitutional rights which we have held subject to collateral attack by federal prisoners. For unlike a claim of denial of effective counsel or of violation of the privilege against self incrimination, as examples, a claim of illegal search and seizure does not impugn the integrity of the fact-finding process or challenge evidence as inherently unreliable; rather, the exclusion of illegally seized evidence is simply a prophylactic device intended generally to deter Fourth Amendment violations by law enforcement officers.” Id., at 224.

In rejecting this rationale, the Court noted that under prior decisions “the federal habeas remedy extends to state prisoners alleging that unconstitutionally obtained evidence was admitted against them at trial,”1 and concluded that there was no basis for restricting “access by federal prisoners with illegal search-and-seizure claims to federal collateral remedies, while placing no similar restriction on access by state prisoners.” Id., at 225-226. In short, on petition for habeas corpus or collateral review filed in a federal district court, whether by state prisoners under 28 U. S. C. § 2254 or federal prisoners under § 2255, the present rule is that Fourth Amendment claims may be asserted and the exclusionary rule must be applied in precisely the same manner as on direct review. Neither the history or purpose of habeas corpus, the desired prophylactic utility of the exclusionary rule as applied to Fourth Amendment claims, nor any sound reason relevant to the administration of criminal justice in our federal system justifies such a power.

*252II

The federal review involved in this Fourth Amendment case goes well beyond the traditional purpose of the writ of habeas corpus. Much of the present perception of habeas corpus stems from a revisionist view of the historic function that writ was meant to perform. The critical historical argument has focused on the nature of the writ at the time of its incorporation in our Constitution and at the time of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, the direct ancestor of contemporary habeas corpus statutes.2 In Fay v. Nota, 372 U. S. 391, 426 (1963), the Court interpreted the writ’s historic position as follows:

"At the time the privilege of the writ was written into the Federal Constitution it was settled that the writ lay to test any restraint contrary to fundamental law, which in England stemmed ultimately from Magna Charta but in this country was embodied in the written Constitution. Congress in 1867 sought to provide a federal forum for state prisoners having constitutional defenses by extending the habeas corpus powers of the federal courts to their constitutional maximum. Obedient to this purpose, we have consistently held that federal court *253jurisdiction is conferred by the allegation of an unconstitutional restraint and is not defeated by anything that may occur in the state court proceedings.”

If this were a correct interpretation of the relevant history, the present wide scope accorded the writ would have arguable support, despite the impressive reasons to the contrary. But recent scholarship has cast grave doubt on Fay’s version of the writ’s historic function.

It has been established that both the Framers of the Constitution and the authors of the 1867 Act expected that the scope of habeas corpus would be determined with reference to the writ’s historic, common-law development.3 Mr. Chief Justice Marshall early referred to the common-law conception of the writ in determining its constitutional and statutory scope, Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75, 93-94 (1807); Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193, 201-202 (1830), and Professor Oaks has noted that “when the 1867 Congress provided that persons restrained of their liberty in violation of the Constitution could obtain a writ of habeas corpus from a federal court, it undoubtedly intended — except to the extent the legislation provided otherwise — to incorporate the common-law uses and functions of this remedy.” 4

It thus becomes important to understand exactly what was the common-law scope of the writ both when embraced by our Constitution and incorporated into the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867. Two respected scholars have recently explored precisely these questions.5 Their efforts *254have been both meticulous and revealing. Their conclusions differ significantly from those of the Court in Fay v. Noia, that habeas corpus traditionally has been available “to remedy any kind of governmental restraint contrary to fundamental law.” 372 U. S., at 405.

The considerable evidence marshaled by these scholars need not be restated here. Professor Oaks makes a convincing case that under the common law of habeas corpus at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, “once a person had been convicted by a superior court of general jurisdiction, a court disposing of a habeas corpus petition could not go behind the conviction for any purpose other than to verify the formal jurisdiction of the committing court.” 6 Certainly that was what Mr. Chief Justice Marshall understood when he stated:

“This writ {habeas corpus] is, as has been said, in the nature of a writ of error which brings up the body of the prisoner with the cause of commitment. The court can undoubtedly inquire into the sufficiency of that cause; but if it be the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, especially a judgment withdrawn by law from the revision of this court, is not that judgment in itself sufficient cause? Can the court, upon this writ, look beyond the judgment, and re-examine the charges on which it was rendered. A judgment, in its nature, concludes the subject on which it is rendered, and pronounces the law of the case. The judgment of a court of record whose jurisdiction is final, is as conclusive on all the world as the judgment of this court would be. It is as conclusive on this court as it is on other courts. It puts an end to inquiry concerning the fact, by deciding it.” Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet., at 202-203.

*255The respect shown under common law for the finality of the judgment of a committing court at the time of the Constitution and in the early 19th century did not, of course, explicitly contemplate the operation of habeas corpus in the context of federal-state relations. Federal habeas review for state prisoners was not available until passage of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867. Yet there is no evidence that Congress intended that Act to jettison the respect theretofore shown by a reviewing court for prior judgments by a court of proper jurisdiction. The Act “received only the most perfunctory attention and consideration in the Congress; indeed, there were complaints that its effects could not be understood at all.” 7 In fact, as Professor Bator notes, it would require overwhelming evidence, which simply is not present, to conclude that the 1867 Congress intended “to tear habeas corpus entirely out of the context of its historical meaning and scope and convert it into an ordinary writ of error with respect to all federal questions in all criminal cases.” 8 Rather, the House Judiciary Committee when it reviewed the Act in 1884 understood that it was not “contemplated by its framers or . . . properly . . . construed to authorize the overthrow of the final judgments of the State courts of general jurisdiction, by the inferior Federal judges. ...”9

Much, of course, has transpired since that first Habeas Corpus Act. See Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S., at 449-463 (Harlan, J., dissenting). The scope of federal habeas corpus for state prisoners has evolved from a quite limited inquiry into whether the committing state court had jurisdiction, Andrews v. Swartz, 156 U. S. 272 (1895); In re *256 Moran, 203 U. S. 96 (1906), to whether the applicant had been given an adequate opportunity in state court to raise his constitutional claims, Frank v. Mangum, 237 U. S. 309 (1915); and finally to actual redetermination in federal court of state court rulings on a wide variety of constitutional contentions, Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443 (1953). No one would now suggest that this Court be imprisoned by every particular of habeas corpus as it existed in the late 18th and 19th centuries. But recognition of that reality does not liberate us from all historical restraint. The historical evidence demonstrates that the purposes of the writ, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, were tempered by a due regard for the finality of the judgment of the committing court. This regard was maintained substantially intact when Congress, in the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, first extended federal habeas review to the delicate interrelations of our dual court systems.

Ill

Recent decisions, however, have tended to depreciate the importance of the finality of prior judgments in criminal cases. Kaufman, 394 U. S., at 228; Sanders v. United States, 373 U. S. 1, 8 (1963); Fay, supra, at 424. This trend may be a justifiable evolution of the use of habeas corpus where the one in state custody raises a constitutional claim bearing on his innocence. But the justification for disregarding the historic scope and function of the writ is measurably less apparent in the typical Fourth Amendment claim asserted on collateral attack. In this latter case, a convicted defendant is most often asking society to redetermine a matter with no bearing at all on the basic justice of his incarceration.

Habeas corpus indeed should provide the added assurance for a free society that no innocent man suffers an unconstitutional loss of liberty. The Court in Fay described *257habeas corpus as a remedy for “whatever society deems to be intolerable restraints,” and recognized that those to whom the writ should be granted “are persons whom society has grievously wronged and for whom belated liberation is little enough compensation.” Id., at 401-402, 441. The Court there acknowledged that the central reason for the writ lay in remedying injustice to the individual. Recent commentators have recognized the same core concept, one noting that “where person-al liberty is involved, a democratic society . . . insists that it is less important to reach an unshakable decision than to do justice (emphasis added),”10 and another extolling the use of the writ in Leyra v. Denno, 347 U. S. 556 (1954), with the assertion that “[b]ut for federal habeas corpus, these two men would have gone to their deaths for crimes of which they were found not guilty.” 11

I am aware that history reveals no exact tie of the writ of habeas corpus to a constitutional claim relating to innocence or guilt. Traditionally, the writ was unavailable even for many constitutional pleas grounded on a claimant’s innocence, while many contemporary proponents of expanded employment of the writ would permit its issuance for one whose deserved confinement was never in doubt. We are now faced, however, with the task of accommodating the historic respect for the finality of the judgment of a committing court with recent Court expansions of the role of the writ. This accommodation can best be achieved, with due regard to all of the values implicated, by recourse to the central reason for habeas corpus: the affording of means, *258through an extraordinary writ, of redressing an unjust incarceration.

Federal habeas review of search and seizure claims is rarely relevant to this reason. Prisoners raising Fourth Amendment claims collaterally usually are quite justly detained. The evidence obtained from searches and seizures is often “the clearest proof of guilt” with a very high content of reliability.12 Rarely is there any contention that the search rendered the evidence unreliable or that its means cast doubt upon the prisoner’s guilt. The words of Mr. Justice Black drive home the point:

“A claim of illegal search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment is crucially different from many other constitutional rights; ordinarily the evidence seized can in no way have been rendered untrustworthy by the means of its seizure and indeed often this evidence alone establishes beyond virtually any shadow of a doubt that the defendant is guilty.” Kaufman v. United States, 394 U. S., at 237 (1969) (dissenting opinion).

Habeas corpus review of search and seizure claims thus brings a deficiency of our system of criminal justice into sharp focus: a convicted defendant asserting no constitutional claim bearing on innocence and relying solely on an alleged unlawful search, is now entitled to federal habeas review of state conviction and the likelihood of release if the reviewing court concludes that the search was unlawful. That federal courts would actually redetermine constitutional claims bearing no relation to the prisoner’s innocence with the possibility of releasing him from custody if the search is held unlawful not only defeats our societal interest in a rational legal system but serves no compensating ends of personal justice.

*259IV

This unprecedented extension of habeas corpus far beyond its historic bounds and in disregard of the writ’s central purpose is an anomaly in our system sought to be justified only by extrinsic reasons which will be addressed in Part Y of this opinion. But first let us look at the costs of this anomaly — costs in terms of serious intrusions on other societal values. It is these other values that have been subordinated — not to further justice on behalf of arguably innocent persons but all too often to serve mechanistic rules quite unrelated to justice in a particular case. Nor are these neglected values unimportant to justice in the broadest sense or to our system of Government. They include (i) the most effective utilization of limited judicial resources, (ii) the necessity of finality in criminal trials, (iii) the minimization of friction between our federal and state systems of justice, and (iv) the maintenance of the constitutional balance upon which the doctrine of federalism is founded.

When raised on federal habeas, a claim generally has been considered by two or more tiers of state courts. It is the solemn duty of these courts, no less than federal ones, to safeguard personal liberties and consider federal claims in accord with federal law. The task which federal courts are asked to perform on habeas is thus most often one that has or should have been done before. The presumption that “if a job can be well done once, it should not be done twice” is sound and one calculated to utilize best “the intellectual, moral, and political resources involved in the legal system.” 13

*260Those resources are limited but demand on them constantly increases. There is an insistent call on federal courts both in civil actions, many novel and complex, which affect intimately the lives of great numbers of people and in original criminal trials and appeals which deserve our most careful attention.14 To the extent the federal courts are required to re-examine claims on collat*261eral attack,15 they deprive primary litigants of their prompt availability and mature reflection. After all, the resources of our system are finite: their overextension jeopardizes the care and quality essential to fair adjudication.

The present scope of federal habeas corpus also has worked to defeat the interest of society in a rational point of termination for criminal litigation. Professor Amsterdam has identified some of the finality interests at stake in collateral proceedings:

“They involve (a) duplication of judicial effort; (b) delay in setting the criminal proceeding at rest; (c) inconvenience and possibly danger in transporting a prisoner to the sentencing court for hearing; (d) postponed litigation of fact, hence litigation which will often be less reliable in reproducing the facts (i) respecting the postconviction claim itself, and (ii) respecting the issue of guilt if the collateral attack succeeds in a form which allows retrial. . . .”

He concluded that:

“[I]n combination, these finality considerations amount to a more or less persuasive argument against the cognizability of any particular collateral *262claim, the strength of the argument depending upon the nature of the claim, the manner' of its treatment (if any) in the conviction proceedings, and the circumstances under which collateral litigation must be had.” 16

No effective judicial system can afford to concede the continuing theoretical possibility that there is error in every trial and that every incarceration is unfounded. At some point the law must convey to those in custody that a wrong has been committed, that consequent punishment has been imposed, that one should no longer look back with the view to resurrecting every imaginable basis for further litigation but rather should look forward to rehabilitation and to becoming a constructive citizen.17

Nowhere should the merit of this view be more self-evident than in collateral attack on an allegedly unlawful search and seizure, where the petitioner often asks society to redetermine a claim with no relationship at all to the justness of his confinement. Professor Amsterdam has noted that “for reasons which are common to all search and seizure claims,” he “would hold even a slight finality interest sufficient to deny the collateral remedy.” 18 But, in fact, a strong finality interest militates against allow*263ing collateral review of search-and-seizure claims. Apart from the duplication of resources inherent in most habeas corpus proceedings, the validity of a search-and-seizure claim frequently hinges on a complex matrix of events which may be difficult indeed for the habeas court to disinter especially where, as often happens, the trial occurred years before the collateral attack and the state record is thinly sketched.19

Finally, the present scope of habeas corpus tends to undermine the values inherent in our federal system of government. To the extent that every state criminal judgment is to be subject indefinitely to broad and repetitive federal oversight, we render the actions of state courts a serious disrespect in derogation of the constitutional balance between the two systems.20 The present expansive scope of federal habeas review has prompted no small friction between state and federal judiciaries. Justice Paul C. Reardon of the Massachusetts Supreme *264Judicial Court and then President of the National Center for State Courts, in identifying problems between the two systems, noted bluntly that “[t]he first, without question, is the effect of Federal habeas corpus proceedings on State courts.” He spoke of the “humiliation of review from the full bench of the highest State appellate court to a single United States District Court judge.” Such broad federal habeas powers encourage in his view the “growing denigration of the State courts and their functions in the public mind.” 21 In so speaking Justice Reardon echoed the words of Professor Bator:

“I could imagine nothing more subversive of a judge’s sense of responsibility, of the inner subjective conscientiousness which is so essential a part of the difficult and subtle art of judging well, than an in*265discriminate acceptance of the notion that all the shots will always be called by someone else.” 22

In my view, this Court has few more pressing responsibilities than to restore the mutual respect and the balanced .sharing of responsibility between the state and federal courts which our tradition and the Constitution itself so wisely contemplate. This can be accomplished without retreat from our inherited insistence that the writ of habeas corpus retain its full vitality as a means of redressing injustice.

This case involves only a relatively narrow aspect of the appropriate reach of habeas corpus. The specific issue before us, and the only one that need be decided at this time, is the extent to which a state prisoner may obtain federal habeas corpus review of a Fourth Amendment claim. Whatever may be formulated as a more comprehensive answer to the important broader issues (whether by clarifying legislation or in subsequent decisions), Mr. Justice Black has suggested what seems to me to be the appropriate threshold requirement in a case of this kind:

“I would always require that the convicted defendant raise the kind of constitutional claim that casts some shadow of a doubt on his guilt.” Kaufman v. United States, 394 U. S., at 242 (dissenting opinion).

In a perceptive analysis, Judge Henry J. Friendly expressed a similar view. He would draw the line against habeas corpus review in the absence of a “colorable claim of innocence”:

“[W]ith a few important exceptions, convictions should be subject to collateral attack only when *266the prisoner supplements his constitutional plea with a colorable claim of innocence.” 23

Where there is no constitutional claim bearing on innocence, the inquiry of the federal court on habeas review of a state prisoner’s Fourth Amendment claim should be confined solely to the question whether the defendant was provided a fair opportunity in the state courts to raise and have adjudicated the Fourth Amendment claim. Limiting the scope of habeas review in this manner would reduce the role of the federal courts in determining the merits of constitutional claims with no relation to a petitioner’s innocence and contribute to the restoration of recently neglected values to their proper place in our criminal justice system.

Y

The importance of the values referred to above is not questioned. What, then, is the reason which has prompted this Court in recent decisions to extend habeas corpus to Fourth Amendment claims largely in disregard of its history as well as these values? In addressing Mr. Justice Black’s dissenting view that constitutional claims raised collaterally should be relevant to the petitioner’s innocence, the majority in Kaufman noted:

“It [Mr. Justice Black’s view] brings into question the propriety of the exclusionary rule itself. The application of that rule is not made to turn on the *267existence of a possibility of innocence; rather, exclusion of illegally obtained evidence is deemed necessary to protect the right of all citizens, not merely the citizen on trial, to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures.” 394 U. S., at 229. (Emphasis added.)

The exclusionary rule has occasioned much criticism, largely on grounds that its application permits guilty defendants to go free and law-breaking officers to go unpunished.24 The oft-asserted reason for the rule is to deter illegal searches and seizures by the police, Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206, 217 (1960); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 TJ. S. 643, 656 (1961) ; Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618, 636 (1965); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 29 (1968).25 *268The efficacy of this deterrent function, however, has been brought into serious question by recent empirical research. Whatever the rule’s merits on an initial trial and appeal26 — a question not in issue here — the case for *269collateral application of the rule is an anemic one. On collateral attack, the exclusionary rule retains its major liabilities while the asserted benefit of the rule dissolves. For whatever deterrent function the rule may serve when applied on trial and appeal becomes greatly attenuated when, months or years afterward, the claim surfaces for collateral review. The impermissible conduct has long since occurred, and the belated wrist slap of state police by federal courts harms no one but society on whom the convicted criminal is newly released.27

Searches and seizures are an opaque area of the law: flagrant Fourth Amendment abuses will rarely escape detection but there is a vast twilight zone with respect to which one Justice has stated that our own “decisions . . . are hardly notable for their predictability,” 28 and another has observed that this Court was “ 'bifurcating elements too infinitesimal to be split.’ ” 29 Serious Fourth Amendment infractions can be dealt with by state judges or by this Court on direct review. But the nonfrivolous Fourth Amendment claims that survive for collateral attack are most likely to be in this grey, twilight area, where the law is difficult for courts to apply, let alone for the policeman on the beat to understand. This is. *270precisely the type of case where the deterrent function of the exclusionary rule is least efficacious, and where there is the least justification for freeing a duly convicted defendant.30

Our decisions have not encouraged the thought that what may be an appropriate constitutional policy in one context automatically becomes such for all times and all seasons. In Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S., at 629, the Court recognized the compelling practical considerations against retroactive application of the exclusionary rule. Rather than viewing the rule as having eternal constitutional verity, the Court decided to

“weigh the merits and demerits in each case by looking to the prior history of the rule in question, its purpose and effect, and whether retrospective operation will further or retard its operation. We believe that this approach is particularly correct with reference to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions as to unreasonable searches and seizures.” Id., at 629.

Such a pragmatic approach compelled the Court to conclude that the rule’s deterrent function would not be advanced by its retrospective application:

“The misconduct of the police prior to Mapp has already occurred and will not be corrected by releasing the prisoners involved. . . . Finally, the ruptured privacy of the victims’ homes and effects cannot be restored. Reparation comes too late.” Id., at 637.

See also Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244 (1969).

The same practical, particularized analysis of the exclusionary rule’s necessity also was evident in Walder v. United States, 347 U. S. 62 (1954), when the Court per*271mitted the Government to utilize unlawfully seized evidence to impeach the credibility of a defendant who had first testified broadly in his own defense. The Court held, in effect, that the policies protected by the exclusionary rule were outweighed in this case by the need to prevent perjury and assure the integrity of proceedings at trial. The Court concluded that to apply the exclusionary rule in such circumstances “would be a perversion of the Fourth Amendment.” Id., at 65. The judgment in Walder revealed most pointedly that the policies behind the exclusionary rule are neither absolute nor all-encompassing, but rather must be weighed and balanced against a competing and more compelling policy, namely the need for effective determination of truth at trial.

In sum: the case for the exclusionary rule varies with the setting in which it is imposed. It makes little sense to extend the Mapp exclusionary rule to a federal habeas proceeding where its asserted deterrent effect must be least efficacious, and its obvious harmful consequences persist in full force.

VI

The final inquiry is whether the above position conforms to 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (a) which provides:

“The Supreme Court, a Justice thereof, a circuit judge, or a district court shall entertain an application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.”

The trend in recent years has witnessed a proliferation of constitutional rights, “a vast expansion of the claims of error in criminal cases for which a resourceful defense lawyer can find a constitutional basis.” 31 Federal ha-*272beas jurisdiction has been extended far beyond anyone’s expectation or intendment when the concept of “custody in violation of the Constitution,” now in § 2254 (a), first appeared in federal law over a century ago.32

Mr. Justice Black was clearly correct in noting that “not every conviction based in part on a denial of a constitutional right is subject to attack by habeas corpus or § 2255 proceedings after a conviction has become final.” Kaufman, 394 U. S., at 232 (dissenting opinion). No evidence exists that Congress intended every allegation of a constitutional violation to afford an appropriate basis for collateral review: indeed, the latest revisions of the Federal Habeas Corpus statute in 1966 33 and the enactment of § 2254 (a) came at the time a majority of the courts of appeals held that claims of unlawful search and seizure “ ‘are not proper matters to be presented by a motion to vacate sentence under § 2255 but can only be properly presented by appeal from the conviction.’ ” Id., at 220, quoting Warren v. United States, 311 F. 2d 673, 675 (CA8 1963).34 Though the precise discussion in Kaufman concerned the claims of federal prisoners under § 2255, the then-existing principle of a distinction between review of search-and-seizure claims in direct and collateral proceedings clearly existed.

There is no indication that Congress intended to wipe out this distinction. Indeed, the broad purpose of the 1966 amendments pointed in the opposite direction. The report of the Senate Judiciary Committee notes that:

“Although only a small number of these [habeas] applications have been found meritorious, the ap*273plications in their totality have imposed a heavy burden on the Federal courts. . . . The bill seeks to alleviate the unnecessary burden by introducing a greater degree of finality of judgments in habeas corpus proceedings.” S. Rep. No. 1797, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1966).35

The House Report states similarly that:

“While in only a small number of these applications have the petitioners been successful, they nevertheless have not only imposed an unnecessary burden on the work of the Federal courts but have also greatly interfered with the procedures and processes of the State courts by delaying, in many cases, the proper enforcement of their judgments.” H. R. Rep. No. 1892, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 5 (1966).

This most recent congressional expression on the scope of federal habeas corpus reflected the sentiment, shared alike by judges and legislators, that the writ has overrun its historical banks to inundate the dockets of federal courts and denigrate the role of state courts. Though Congress did not address the precise question at hand, nothing in §2254 (a), the state of the law at the time of its adoption, or the historical uses of the language “custody in violation of the Constitution” from which § 2254 (a) is derived,36 compels a holding that rulings of state courts on claims of unlawful search and *274seizure must be reviewed and redetermined in collateral proceedings.

YII

Perhaps no single development of the criminal law has had consequences so profound as the escalating use, over the past two decades, of federal habeas corpus to reopen and readjudicate state criminal judgments. I have commented in Part IV above on the far-reaching consequences: the burden on the system,37 in terms of demands on the courts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other personnel and facilities; the absence of efficiency and finality in the criminal process, frustrating both the deterrent function of the law and the effectiveness of rehabilitation ; the undue subordination of state courts, with the resulting exacerbation of state-federal relations; and the subtle erosion of the doctrine of federalism itself. Perhaps the single most disquieting consequence of open-ended habeas review is reflected in the prescience of Mr. Justice Jackson’s warning that “[i]t must prejudice the occasional meritorious application to be buried in a flood of worthless ones.” 38

If these consequences flowed from the safeguarding of constitutional claims of innocence they should, of course, be accepted as a tolerable price to pay for cherished standards of justice at the same time that efforts are pursued to find more rational procedures. Yet, as illustrated by the case before us today, the question on habeas corpus is *275too rarely whether the prisoner was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted39 and too frequently whether some evidence of undoubted probative value has been admitted in violation of an exclusionary rule ritualistically applied without due regard to whether it has the slightest likelihood of achieving its avowed prophylactic purpose.

It is this paradox of a system, which so often seems to subordinate substance to form, that increasingly provokes criticism and lack of confidence. Indeed, it is difficult to explain why a system of criminal justice deserves respect which allows repetitive reviews of convictions long since held to have been final at the end of the normal process of trial and appeal where the basis for re-examination is not even that the convicted defendant was innocent. There has been a halo about the “Great Writ” that no one would wish to dim. Yet one must wonder whether the stretching of its use far beyond any justifiable purpose will not in the end weaken rather than strengthen the writ’s vitality.

Me. Justice Douglas,

dissenting.

I agree with the Court of Appeals that “verbal assent” to a search is not enough, that the fact that consent was given to the search does not imply that the suspect knew that the alternative of a refusal existed. 448 F. 2d 699, 700. As that court stated:

“[U]nder many circumstances a reasonable person might read an officer's ‘May I’ as the courteous ex*276pression of a demand backed, by force of law.” Id., at 701.

A considerable constitutional guarantee rides on this narrow issue. At the time of the search there was no probable cause to believe that the car contained contraband or other unlawful articles. The car was stopped only because a headlight and the license plate light were burned out. The car belonged to Alcala’s brother, from whom it was borrowed, and Alcala had a driver’s license. Traffic citations were appropriately issued. The car was searched, the present record showing that Alcala consented. But whether Alcala knew he had the right to refuse, we do not know. All the Court of Appeals did was to remand the case to the District Court for a finding — and if necessary, a hearing on that issue.

I would let the case go forward on that basis. The long, time-consuming contest in this Court might well wash out. At least we could be assured that, if it came back, we would not be rendering an advisory opinion. Had I voted to grant this petition, I would suggest we dismiss it as improvidently granted. But, being in the minority, I am bound by the Rule of Four.

Mr. Justice Brennan,

dissenting.

The Fourth Amendment specifically guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures . . . .” We have consistently held that governmental searches conducted pursuant to a validly obtained warrant or reasonably incident to a valid arrest do not violate this guarantee. Here, however, as the Court itself recognizes, no search warrant was obtained and the State does not even suggest “that there was probable cause to search the vehicle or that the search was incident to a valid arrest of any of the occupants.” Ante, *277at 227-228. As a result, the search of the vehicle can be justified solely on the ground that the owner’s brother gave his consent — that is, that he waived his Fourth Amendment right “to be secure” against an otherwise “unreasonable” search. The Court holds today that an individual can effectively waive this right even though he is totally ignorant of the fact that, in the absence of his consent, such invasions of his privacy would be constitutionally prohibited. It wholly escapes me how our citizens can meaningfully be said to have waived something as precious as.a constitutional guarantee without ever being aware of its existence. In my view, the Court’s conclusion is supported neither by “linguistics,” nor by “epistemology,” nor, indeed, by “common sense.” I respectfully dissent.

Mr. Justice Marshall,

dissenting.

Several years ago, Mr. Justice Stewart reminded us that “[t]he Constitution guarantees ... a society of free choice. Such a society presupposes the capacity of its members to choose.” Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629, 649 (1968) (concurring in result). I would have thought that the capacity to choose necessarily depends upon knowledge that there is a choice to be made. But today the Court reaches the curious result that one can choose to relinquish a constitutional right— the right to be free of unreasonable searches — without knowing that he has the alternative of refusing to accede to a police request to search.1 I cannot agree, and therefore dissent.

*278I

1 believe that the Court misstates the true issue in this case. That issue is not, as the Court suggests, whether the police overbore Alcala’s will in eliciting his consent, but rather, whether a simple statement of assent to search, without more,2 should be sufficient to permit the police to search and thus act as a relinquishment of Alcala’s constitutional right to exclude the police.3 This Court has always scrutinized with great care claims that a person has forgone the opportunity to assert constitutional rights. See, e. g., Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972); D. H. Overmyer Co. v. Frick Co., 405 U. S. 174 (1972); Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U. S. 238 (1969); Carnley v. Cochran, 369 U. S. 506 (1962). I see no reason to give the claim that a person consented to a search any less rigorous scrutiny. Every case in this Court involving this kind of search has heretofore spoken *279of consent as a waiver.4 See, e. g., Amos v. United States, 255 TJ. S. 313, 317 (1921); Zap v. United States, 328 U. S. 624, 628 (1946); Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 13 (1948).5 Perhaps one skilled in lin*280guistics or epistemology can disregard those comments, but I find them hard to ignore.

To begin, it is important to understand that the opinion of the Court is misleading in its treatment of the issue here in three ways. First, it derives its criterion for determining when a verbal statement of assent to search operates as a relinquishment of a person’s right to preclude entry from a justification of consent searches that is inconsistent with our treatment in earlier cases of exceptions to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, and that is not responsive to the unique nature of the consent-search exception. Second, it applies a standard of voluntariness that was developed in a very different context, where the standard was based on policies different from those involved in this case. Third, it mischaracterizes our prior cases involving consent searches.

A

The Court assumes that the issue in this case is: what are the standards by which courts are to determine that consent is voluntarily given? It then imports into the law of search and seizure standards developed to decide entirely different questions about coerced confessions.6

The Fifth Amendment, in terms, provides that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” Nor is the interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment any different. The inquiry in a case where a confession is challenged as having been elicited in an unconstitutional manner is, therefore, whether the behavior *281of the police amounted to compulsion of the defendant.7 Because of the nature of the right to be free of compulsion, it would be pointless to ask whether a defendant knew of it before he made a statement; no sane person would knowingly relinquish a right to be free of compulsion. Thus, the questions of compulsion and of violation of the right itself are inextricably intertwined. The cases involving coerced confessions, therefore, pass over the question of knowledge of that right as irrelevant, and turn directly to the question of compulsion.

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), confirms this analysis. There the Court held that certain warnings must be given to suspects prior to their interrogation so that the inherently coercive nature of in-custody questioning would be diminished by the suspect’s knowledge that he could remain silent. But, although those warnings, of course, convey information about various rights of the accused, the information is intended only to protect the suspect against acceding to the other coercive aspects of police interrogation. While we would not ordinarily think that a suspect could waive his right to be free of coercion, for example, we do permit suspects to waive the rights they are informed of by police warnings, on the belief that such information in itself sufficiently decreases the chance that a statement would be elicited by compulsion. Id., at 475-476. Thus, nothing the defendant did in the cases involving coerced confessions was taken to operate as a relinquishment of his rights; certainly the fact that the defendant made *282a statement was never taken to be a relinquishment of the right to be free of coercion.8

B

In contrast, this case deals not with “coercion,” but with “consent,” a subtly different concept to which different standards have been applied in the past. Freedom from coercion is a substantive right, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Consent, however, is a mechanism by which substantive requirements, otherwise applicable, are avoided. In the context of the Fourth Amendment, the relevant substantive requirements are that searches be conducted only after evidence justifying them has been submitted to an impartial magistrate for a determination of probable cause. There are, of course, exceptions to these requirements based on a variety of exigent circumstances that make it impractical to invalidate a search simply because the police failed to get a warrant.9 But none of the exceptions *283relating to the overriding needs of law enforcement are applicable when a search is justified solely by consent. On the contrary, the needs of law enforcement are significantly more attenuated, for probable cause to search may be lacking but a search permitted if the subject’s consent has been obtained. Thus, consent searches are permitted, not because such an exception to the requirements of probable cause and warrant is essential to proper law enforcement, but because we permit our citizens to choose whether or not they wish to exercise their constitutional rights. Our prior decisions simply do not support the view that a meaningful choice has been made solely because no coercion was brought to bear on the subject.

For example, in Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U. S. 543 (1968), four law enforcement officers went to the home of Bumper’s grandmother. They announced that they had a search warrant, and she permitted them to enter. Subsequently, the prosecutor chose not to rely on the warrant, but attempted to justify the search by the woman’s consent. We held that consent could not be established “by showing no more than acquiescence to a claim of lawful authority,” id., at 548-549. We did not there inquire into all the circumstances, but focused on a single fact, the claim of authority, even though the grandmother testified that no threats were made. Id., at 547 n. 8. It may be that, on the facts of that case, her consent was under all the circumstances involuntary, but it is plain that we did not apply the test adopted by the Court today. And, whatever the posture of the case when it reached this Court, it could *284not be said that the police in Bumper acted in a threatening or coercive manner, for they did have the warrant they said they had; the decision not to rely on it was made long after the search, when the case came into court.10

That case makes it clear that police officers may not courteously order the subject of a search simply to stand aside while the officers carry out a search they have settled on. Yet there would be no coercion or brutality in giving that order. No interests that the Court today recognizes would be damaged in such a search. Thus, all the police must do is conduct what will inevitably be a charade of asking for consent. If they display any firmness at all, a verbal expression of assent will undoubtedly be forthcoming. I cannot believe that the protections of the Constitution mean so little.

II

My approach to the case is straightforward and, to me, obviously required by the notion of consent as a relinquishment of Fourth Amendment rights. I am at a loss to understand why consent “cannot be taken literally to mean a 'knowing’ choice.” Ante, at 224. In fact, I have difficulty in comprehending how a decision made without knowledge of available alternatives can be treated as a choice at all.

If consent to search means that a person has chosen to forgo his right to exclude the police from the place they seek to search, it follows that his consent cannot *285be considered a meaningful choice unless he knew that he could in fact exclude the police. The Court appears, however, to reject even the modest proposition that, if the subject of a search convinces the trier of fact that he did not know of his right to refuse assent to a police request for permission to search, the search must be held unconstitutional. For it says only that “knowledge of the right to refuse consent is one factor to be taken into account.” Ante, at 227. I find this incomprehensible. I can think of no other situation in which we would say that a person agreed to some course of action if he convinced us that he did not know that there was some other course he might have pursued. I would therefore hold, at a minimum, that the prosecution may not rely on a purported consent to search if the subject of the search did not know that he could refuse to give consent. That, I think, is the import of Bumper v. North Carolina, supra. Where the police claim authority to search yet in fact lack such authority, the subject does not know that he may permissibly refuse them entry, and it is this lack of knowledge that invalidates the consent.

If one accepts this view, the question then is a simple one: must the Government show that the subject knew of his rights, or must the subject show that he lacked such knowledge?

I think that any fair allocation of the burden would require that it be placed on the prosecution. On- this question, the Court indulges in what might be called the “straw man” method of adjudication. The Court responds to this suggestion by overinflating the burden. And, when it is suggested that the prosecution’s burden of proof could be easily satisfied if the police informed the subject of his rights, the Court responds by refusing to require the police to make a “detailed” inquiry. Ante, at 245. If the Court candidly faced the real *286question of allocating the burden of proof, neither of these maneuvers would be available to it.

If the burden is placed on the defendant, all the subject can do is to testify that he did not know of his rights. And I doubt that many trial judges will find for the defendant simply on the basis of that testimony. Precisely because the evidence is very hard to come by, courts have traditionally been reluctant to require a party to prove negatives such as the lack of knowledge. See, e. g., 9 J. Wigmore, Evidence 274 (3d ed. 1940); F. James, Civil Procedure § 7.8 (1965); E. Morgan, Some Problems of Proof Under the Anglo-American System of Litigation 75-76 (1956).

In contrast, there are several ways by which the subject’s knowledge of his rights may be shown. The subject may affirmatively demonstrate such knowledge by his responses at the time the search took place, as in United States v. Curíale, 414 F. 2d 744 (CA2 1969). Where, as in this case, the person giving consent is someone other than the defendant, the prosecution may require him to testify under oath. Denials of knowledge may be disproved by establishing that the subject had, in the recent past, demonstrated his knowledge of his rights, for example, by refusing entry when it was requested by the police. The prior experience or training of the subject might in some cases support an inference that he knew of his right to exclude the police.

The burden on the prosecutor would disappear, of course, if the police, at the time they requested consent to search, also told the subject that he had a right to refuse consent and that his decision to refuse would be respected. The Court’s assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, there is nothing impractical about this method of satisfying the prosecution’s burden of proof.11 *287It must be emphasized that the decision about informing the subject of his rights would lie with the officers seeking consent. If they believed that providing such information would impede their investigation, they might simply ask for consent, taking the risk that at some later date the prosecutor would be unable to prove that the subject knew of his rights or that some other basis for the search existed.

The Court contends that if an officer paused to inform the subject of his rights, the informality of the exchange would be destroyed. I doubt that a simple statement by an officer of an individual’s right to refuse consent would do much to alter the informality of the exchange, except to alert the subject to a fact that he surely is entitled to know. It is not without significance that for many years the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have routinely informed subjects of their right to refuse consent, when they request consent to search. Note, Consent Searches: A Reappraisal After Miranda v. Arizona, 67 Col. L. Rev. 130, 143 n. 75 (1967) (citing letter from J. Edgar Hoover). The reported cases in which the police have informed subjects of their right to refuse consent show, also, that the information can be given without disrupting the casual flow of events. See, e. g., United States v. Miller, 395 F. 2d 116 (CA7 1968). What evidence there is, then, rather strongly suggests that nothing disastrous would happen if the police, before requesting consent, informed the subject that he had *288a right to refuse consent and that his refusal would be respected.12

I must conclude, with some reluctance, that when the Court speaks of practicality, what it really is talking of is the continued ability of the police to capitalize on the ignorance of citizens so as to accomplish by subterfuge what they could not achieve by relying only on the knowing relinquishment of constitutional rights. Of course it would be “practical” for the police to ignore the commands of the Fourth Amendment, if by practicality we mean that more criminals will be apprehended, even though the constitutional rights of innocent people also go by the board. But such a practical advantage is achieved only at the cost of permitting the police to disregard the limitations that the Constitution places on their behavior, a cost that a constitutional democracy cannot long absorb.

I find nothing in the opinion of the Court to dispel my belief that, in such a case, as the Court of Appeals for *289the Ninth Circuit said, “[u]nder many circumstances a reasonable person might read an officer’s ‘May I’ as the courteous expression of a demand backed by force of law.” 448 F. 2d, at 701. Most cases, in my view, are akin to Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U. S. 543 (1968) : consent is ordinarily given as acquiescence in an implicit claim of authority to search. Permitting searches in such circumstances, without any assurance at all that the subject of the search knew that, by his consent, he was relinquishing his constitutional rights, is something that I cannot believe is sanctioned by the Constitution.

W-i I — H 1 — 1

The proper resolution of this case turns, I believe, on a realistic assessment of the nature of the interchange between citizens and the police, and of the practical import of allocating the burden of proof in one way rather than another. The Court seeks to escape such assessments by escalating its rhetoric to unwarranted heights, but no matter how forceful the adjectives the Court uses, it cannot avoid being judged by how well its image of these interchanges accords with reality. Although the Court says without real elaboration that it “cannot agree,” ante, at 248, the holding today confines the protection of the Fourth Amendment against searches conducted without probable cause to the sophisticated, the knowledgeable, and, I might add, the few.13 In the final analysis, the Court now sanctions a game of blindman’s buff, in which the police always have the upper hand, for the sake of nothing more than the convenience of *290the police. But the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment were never intended to shrink before such an ephemeral and changeable interest. The Framers of the Fourth Amendment struck the balance against this sort of convenience and in favor of certain basic civil rights. It is not for this Court to restrike that balance because of its own views of the needs of law enforcement officers. I fear that that is the effect of the Court's decision today.

It is regrettable that the obsession with validating searches like that conducted in this case, so evident in the Court’s hyperbole, has obscured the Court’s vision of how the Fourth Amendment was designed to govern the relationship between police and citizen in our society. I believe that experience and careful reflection show how narrow and inaccurate that vision is, and I respectfully dissent.

*179Justice Scalia delivered

the opinion of the Court.

In United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974), this Court reaffirmed that a warrantless entry and search by law enforcement officers does not violate the Fourth Amendment’s proscription of “unreasonable searches and seizures” if the officers have obtained the consent of a third party who possesses common authority over the premises. The present case presents an issue we expressly reserved in Matlock, see id., at 177, n. 14: Whether a warrantless entry is valid when based upon the consent of a third party whom the police, at the time of the entry, reasonably believe to possess common authority over the premises, but who in fact does not do so.

I

Respondent Edward Rodriguez was arrested in his apartment by law. enforcement officers and charged with possession of illegal drugs. The police gained entry to the apartment with the consent and assistance of Gail Fischer, who had lived there with respondent for several months. The relevant facts leading to the arrest are as follows.

On July 26, 1985, police were summoned to the residence of Dorothy Jackson on South Wolcott in Chicago. They were met by Ms. Jackson’s daughter, Gail Fischer, who showed signs of a severe beating. She told the officers that she had been assaulted by respondent Edward Rodriguez earlier that day in an apartment on South California Avenue. Fischer stated that Rodriguez was then asleep in the apartment, and she consented to travel there with the police in order to unlock the door with her key so that the officers could enter and arrest him. During this conversation, Fischer several times referred to the apartment on South California as “our” apartment, and said that she had clothes and furniture there. It is unclear whether she indicated that she currently lived at the apartment, or only that she used to live there.

*180The police officers drove to the apartment on South California, accompanied by Fischer. They did not obtain an arrest warrant for Rodriguez, nor did they seek a search warrant for the apartment. At the apartment, Fischer unlocked the door with her key and gave the officers permission to enter. They moved through the door into the living room, where they observed in plain view drug paraphernalia and containers filled with white powder that they believed (correctly, as later analysis showed) to be cocaine. They proceeded to the bedroom, where they found Rodriguez asleep and discovered additional containers of white powder in two open attaché cases. The officers arrested Rodriguez and seized the drugs and related paraphernalia.

Rodriguez was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. He moved to suppress all evidence seized at the time of his arrest, claiming that Fischer had vacated the apartment several weeks earlier and had no authority to consent to the entry. The Cook County Circuit Court granted the motion, holding that at the time she consented to the entry Fischer did not have common authority over the apartment. The Court concluded that Fischer was not a “usual resident” but rather an “infrequent visitor” at the apartment on South California, based upon its findings that Fischer’s name was not on the lease, that she did not contribute to the rent, that she was not allowed to invite others to the apartment on her own, that she did not have access to the apartment when respondent was away, and that she had moved some of her possessions from the apartment. The Circuit Court also rejected the State’s contention that, even if Fischer did not possess common authority over the premises, there was no Fourth Amendment violation if the police reasonably believed at the time of their entry that Fischer possessed the authority to consent.

The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed the Circuit Court in all respects. The Illinois Supreme Court denied the State’s petition for leave to appeal, 125 Ill. 2d 572, 537 *181N. E. 2d 816 (1989), and we granted certiorari. 493 U. S. 932 (1989).

II

The Fourth Amendment generally prohibits the warrant-less entry of a person’s home, whether to make an arrest or to search for specific objects. Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573 (1980); Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10 (1948). The prohibition does not apply, however, to situations in which voluntary consent has been obtained, either from the individual whose property is searched, see Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218 (1973), or from a third party who possesses common authority over the premises, see United States v. Matlock, supra, at 171. The State of Illinois contends that that exception applies in the present case.

As we stated in Matlock, supra, at 171, n. 7, “[cjommon authority” rests “on mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes . . . .” The burden of establishing that common authority rests upon the State. On the basis of this record, it is clear that burden was not sustained. The evidence showed that although Fischer, with her two small children, had lived with Rodriguez beginning in December 1984, she had moved out on July 1, 1985, almost a month before the search at issue here, and had gone to live with her mother. She took her and her children’s clothing with her, though leaving behind some furniture and household effects. During the period after July 1 she sometimes spent the night at Rodriguez’s apartment, but never invited her friends there, and never went there herself when he was not home. Her name was not on the lease nor did she contribute to the rent. She had a key to the apartment, which she said at trial she had taken without Rodriguez’s knowledge (though she testified at the preliminary hearing that Rodriguez had given her the key). On these facts the State has not established that, with respect to the South California apartment, Fischer had *182“joint access or control for most purposes.” To the contrary, the Appellate Court’s determination of no common authority over the apartment was obviously correct.

1 — l 1 — 1 1 — 1

A

The State contends that, even if Fischer did not in fact have authority to give consent, it suffices to validate the entry that the law enforcement officers reasonably believed she did. Before reaching the merits of that contention, we must consider a jurisdictional objection: that the decision below rests on an adequate and independent state ground. Respondent asserts that the Illinois Constitution provides greater protection than is afforded under the Fourth Amendment, and that the Appellate Court relied upon this when it determined that a reasonable belief by the police officers was insufficient.

When a state-court decision is clearly based on state law that is both adequate and independent, we will not review the decision. Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1041 (1983). But when “a state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with the federal law,” we require that it contain a “‘plain statement’ that [it] rests upon adequate and independent state grounds,” id., at 1040, 1042; otherwise, “we will accept as the most reasonable explanation that the state court decided the case the way it did because it believed that federal law required it to do so.” Id., at 1041. Here, the Appellate Court’s opinion contains no “plain statement” that its decision rests on state law. The opinion does not rely on (or even mention) any specific provision of the Illinois Constitution, nor even the Illinois Constitution generally. Even the Illinois cases cited by the opinion rely upon no constitutional provisions other than the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. We conclude that the Appellate Court of Illinois rested its decision on federal law.

*183B

On the merits of the issue, respondent asserts that permitting a reasonable belief of common authority to validate an entry would cause a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights to be “vicariously waived.” Brief for Respondent 32. We disagree.

We have been unyielding in our insistence that a defendant’s waiver of his trial rights cannot be given effect unless it is “knowing” and “intelligent.” Colorado v. Spring, 479 U. S. 564, 574-575 (1987); Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458 (1938). We would assuredly not permit, therefore, evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment to be introduced on the basis of a trial court’s mere “reasonable belief” — derived from statements by unauthorized persons — that the defendant has waived his objection. But one must make a distinction between, on the one hand, trial rights that derive from the violation of constitutional guarantees and, on the other hand, the nature of those constitutional guarantees themselves. As we said in Schneckloth:

“There is a vast difference between those rights that protect a fair criminal trial and the rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. Nothing, either in the purposes behind requiring a ‘knowing’ and ‘intelligent’ waiver of trial rights, or in the practical application of such a requirement suggests that it ought to be extended to the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.” 412 U. S., at 241.

What Rodriguez is assured by the trial right of the exclusionary rule, where it applies, is that no evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment will be introduced at his trial unless he consents. What he is assured by the Fourth Amendment itself, however, is not that no government search of his house will occur unless he consents; but that no such search will occur that is “unreasonable." U. S. Const., Arndt. 4. There are various elements, of course, *184that can make a search of a person’s house “reasonable” — one of which is the consent of the person or his cotenant.. The essence of respondent’s argument is that we should impose upon this element a requirement that we have not imposed upon other elements that regularly compel government officers to exercise judgment regarding the facts: namely, the requirement that their judgment be not only responsible but correct.

The fundamental objective that alone validates all un-consented government searches is, of course, the seizure of persons who have committed or are about to commit crimes, or of evidence related to crimes. But “reasonableness,” with respect to this necessary element, does not demand that the government be factually correct in its assessment that that is what a search will produce. Warrants need only be supported by “probable cause,” which demands no more than a proper “assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts . . . .” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 232 (1983). If a magistrate, based upon seemingly reliable but factually inaccurate information, issues a warrant for the search of a house in which the sought-after felon is not present, has never been present, and was never likely to have been present, the owner of that house suffers one of the inconveniences we all expose ourselves to as the cost of living in a safe society; he does not suffer a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Another element often, though not invariably, required in order to render an unconsented search “reasonable” is, of course, that the officer be authorized by a valid warrant. Here also we have not held that “reasonableness” precludes error with respect to those factual judgments that law enforcement officials are expected to make. In Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U. S. 79 (1987), a warrant supported by probable cause with respect to one apartment was erroneously issued for an entire floor that was divided (though not clearly) into two apartments. We upheld the search of the apartment not properly covered by the warrant. We said:

*185“[T]he validity of the search of respondent’s apartment pursuant to a warrant authorizing the search of the entire third floor depends on whether the officers’ failure to realize the overbreadth of the warrant was objectively understandable and reasonable. Here it unquestionably was. The objective facts available to the officers at the time suggested no distinction between [the suspect’s] apartment and the third-floor premises.” Id., at 88.

The ordinary requirement of a warrant is sometimes supplanted by other elements that render the unconsented search “reasonable.” Here also we have not held that the Fourth Amendment requires factual accuracy. A warrant is not needed, for example, where the search is incident to an arrest. In Hill v. California, 401 U. S. 797 (1971), we upheld a search incident to an arrest, even though the arrest was made of the wrong person. We said:

“The upshot was that the officers in good faith believed Miller was Hill and arrested him. They were quite wrong as it turned out, and subjective good-faith belief would not in itself justify either the arrest or the subsequent search. But sufficient probability, not certainty, is the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment and on the record before us the officers’ mistake was understandable and the arrest a reasonable response to the situation facing them at the time.” Id., at 803-804.

It would be superfluous to multiply these examples. It is apparent that in order to satisfy the “reasonableness” requirement of the Fourth Amendment, what is generally demanded of the many factual determinations that must regularly be made by agents of the government — whether the magistrate issuing a warrant, the police officer executing a warrant, or the police officer conducting a search or seizure under one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement — is not that they always be correct, but that they always be rea*186sonable. As we put it in Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 176 (1949):

“Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability.”

We see no reason to depart from this general rule with respect to facts bearing upon the authority to consent to a search. Whether the basis for such authority exists is the sort of recurring factual question to which law enforcement officials must be expected to apply their judgment; and all the Fourth Amendment requires is that they answer it reasonably. The Constitution is no more violated when officers enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe that the person who has consented to their entry is a resident of the premises, than it is violated when they enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe they are in pursuit of a violent felon who is about to escape. See Archibald v. Mosel, 677 F. 2d 5 (CA1 1982).*

*187 Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483 (1964), is in our view not to the contrary. There, in holding that police had improperly entered the defendant’s hotel room based on the consent of a hotel clerk, we stated that “the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment are not to be eroded ... by unrealistic doctrines of ‘apparent authority.’” Id., at 488. It is ambiguous, of course, whether the word “unrealistic” is descriptive or limiting — that is, whether we were condemning as unrealistic all reliance upon apparent authority, or whether we were condemning only such reliance upon apparent authority as is unrealistic. Similarly ambiguous is the opinion’s earlier statement that “there [is no] substance to the claim that the search was reasonable because the police, relying upon the night clerk’s expressions of consent, had a reasonable basis for the belief that the clerk had authority to consent to the search.” Ibid. Was there no substance to it because it failed as a matter of law, or because the facts could not possibly support it? At one point the opinion does seem to speak clearly:

“It is important to bear in mind that it was the petitioner’s constitutional right which was at stake here, and not the night clerk’s nor the hotel’s. It was a right, therefore, which only the petitioner could waive by word or deed, either directly or through an agent.” Id., at 489.

But as we have discussed, what is at issue when a claim of apparent consent is raised is not whether the right to be free of searches has been waived, but whether the right to be free of unreasonable searches has been violated. Even if one does not think the Stoner opinion had this subtlety in mind, the supposed clarity of its foregoing statement is immediately compromised, as follows:

*188“It is true that the night clerk clearly and unambiguously consented to the search. But there is nothing in the record to indicate that the police had any basis whatsoever to believe that the night clerk had been authorized by the petitioner to permit the police to search the petitioner’s room.” Ibid, (emphasis added).

The italicized language should have been deleted, of course, if the statement two sentences earlier meant that an appearance of authority could never validate a search. In the last analysis, one must admit that the rationale of Stoner was ambiguous — and perhaps deliberately so. It is at least a reasonable reading of the case, and perhaps a preferable one, that the police could not rely upon the obtained consent because they knew it came from a hotel clerk, knew that the room was rented and exclusively occupied by the defendant, and could not reasonably have believed that the former had general access to or control over the latter. Similarly ambiguous in its implications (the Court’s opinion does not even allude to, much less discuss the effects of, “reasonable belief”) is Chapman v. United States, 365 U. S. 610 (1961). In sum, we were correct in Matlock, 415 U. S., at 177, n. 14, when we regarded the present issue as unresolved.

As Stoner demonstrates, what we hold today does not suggest that law enforcement officers may always accept a person’s invitation to enter premises. Even when the invitation is accompanied by an explicit assertion that the person lives there, the surrounding circumstances could conceivably be such that a reasonable person would doubt its truth and not act upon it without further inquiry. As with other factual determinations bearing upon search and seizure, determination of consent to enter must “be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment . . . ‘warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief’ ” that the consenting party had authority over the premises? Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21-22 (1968). If not, then war-*189rantless entry without further inquiry is unlawful unless authority actually exists. But if so, the search is valid.

* * *

In the present case, the Appellate Court found it unnecessary to determine whether the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had the authority to consent, because it ruled as a matter of law that a reasonable belief could not validate the entry. Since we find that ruling to be in error, we remand for consideration of that question. The judgment of the Illinois Appellate Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

So ordered.

Justice Marshall,

with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens join, dissenting.

Dorothy Jackson summoned police officers to her house to report that her daughter Gail Fischer had been beaten. Fischer told police that Ed Rodriguez, her boyfriend, was her assaulter. During an interview with Fischer, one of the officers asked if Rodriguez dealt in narcotics. Fischer did not respond. Fischer did agree, however, to the officers’ request to let them into Rodriguez’s apartment so that they could arrest him for battery. The police, without a warrant and despite the absence of an exigency, entered Rodriguez’s home to arrest him. As a result of their entry, the police discovered narcotics that the State subsequently sought to introduce in a drug prosecution against Rodriguez.

The majority agrees with the Illinois Appellate Court’s determination that Fischer did not have authority to consent to the officers’ entry of Rodriguez’s apartment. Ante, at 181-182. The Court holds that the warrantless entry into Rodriguez’s home was nonetheless valid if the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had authority to consent. Ante this page. The majority’s defense of this position rests on a misconception of the basis for third-party consent searches. That *190such searches do not give rise to claims of constitutional violations rests not on the premise that they are “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment, see ante, at 183-184, but on the premise that a person may voluntarily limit his expectation of privacy by allowing others to exercise authority over his possessions. Cf. Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 351 (1967) (“What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection”). Thus, an individual’s decision to permit another “joint access [to] or control [over the property] for most purposes,” United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164, 171, n. 7 (1974), limits that individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy and to that extent limits his Fourth Amendment protections. Cf. Rakas v. Rlinois, 439 U. S. 128, 148 (1978) (because passenger in car lacked “legitimate expectation of privacy in the glove compartment,” Court did not decide whether search would violate Fourth Amendment rights of someone who had such expectation). If an individual has not so limited his expectation of privacy, the police may not dispense with the safeguards established by the Fourth Amendment.

The baseline for the reasonableness of a search or seizure in the home is the presence of a warrant. Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Assn., 489 U. S. 602 (1989). Indeed, “searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.” Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 586 (1980). Exceptions to the warrant requirement must therefore serve “compelling” law enforcement goals. Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 394 (1978). Because the sole law enforcement purpose underlying third-party consent searches is avoiding the inconvenience of securing a warrant, a departure from the warrant requirement is not justified simply because an officer reasonably believes a third party has consented to a search of the defendant’s home. In holding otherwise, the majority ignores our longstanding view that “the informed and deliberate determina*191tions of magistrates ... as to what searches and seizures are permissible under the Constitution are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers and others who may happen to make arrests.” United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, 464 (1932).

I

The Fourth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their . . . houses . . . shall not be violated.” We have recognized that the “physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.” United States v. United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, 407 U. S. 297, 313 (1972). We have further held that “a search or seizure carried out on a suspect’s premises without a warrant is per se unreasonable, unless the police can show that it falls within one of a carefully defined set of exceptions.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 474 (1971). Those exceptions must be crafted in light of the warrant requirement’s purposes. As this Court stated in McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451 (1948):

“The presence of a search warrant serves a high function. Absent some grave emergency, the Fourth Amendment has interposed a magistrate between the citizen and the police. This was done not to shield criminals nor to make the home a safe haven for illegal activities. It was done so that an objective mind might weigh the need to invade that privacy in order to enforce the law. The right of privacy was deemed too precious to entrust to the discretion of those whose job is the detection of crime and the arrest of criminals.” Id., at 455-456.

The Court has tolerated departures from the warrant requirement only when an exigency makes a warrantless search imperative to the safety of the police and of the community. See, e. g., id., at 456 (“We cannot be true to that *192constitutional requirement and excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative”); Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294 (1967) (hot pursuit); Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969) (interest in officers’ safety justifies search incident to an arrest); Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U. S. 499, 509 (1978) (“compelling need for official action and no time to secure a warrant” justifies warrantless entry of burning building). The Court has often heard, and steadfastly rejected, the invitation to carve out further exceptions to the warrant requirement for searches of the home because of the burdens on police investigation and prosecution of crime. Our rejection of such claims is not due to a lack of appreciation of the difficulty and importance of effective law enforcement, but rather to our firm commitment to “the view of those who wrote the Bill of Rights that the privacy of a person’s home and property may not be totally sacrificed in the name of maximum simplicity in enforcement of the criminal law.” Mincey, supra, at 393 (citing United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 6-11 (1977)).

In the absence of an exigency, then, warrantless home searches and seizures are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The weighty constitutional interest in preventing unauthorized intrusions into the home overrides any law enforcement interest in relying on the reasonable but potentially mistaken belief that a third party has authority to consent to such a search or seizure. Indeed, as the present case illustrates, only the minimal interest in avoiding the inconvenience of obtaining a warrant weighs in on the law enforcement side.

Against this law enforcement interest in expediting arrests is “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511 (1961). To be sure, in some cases in which police officers reasonably rely on a *193third party’s consent, the consent will prove valid, no intrusion will result, and the police will have been spared the inconvenience of securing a warrant. But in other cases, such as this one, the authority claimed by the third party will be false. The reasonableness of police conduct must be measured in light of the possibility that the target has not consented. Where “[n]o reason is offered for not obtaining a search warrant except the inconvenience to the officers and some slight delay necessary to prepare papers and present the evidence to a magistrate,” the Constitution demands that the warrant procedure be observed. Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 15 (1948). The concerns of expediting police work and avoiding paperwork “are never very convincing reasons and, in these circumstances, certainly are not enough to by-pass the constitutional requirement.” Ibid. In this case, as in Johnson, “[n]o suspect was fleeing or likely to take flight. The search was of permanent premises, not of a movable vehicle. No evidence or contraband was threatened with removal or destruction .... If the officers in this case were excused from the constitutional duty of presenting their evidence to a magistrate, it is difficult to think of a case in which it should be required.” Ibid.

Unlike searches conducted pursuant to the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement, see supra, at 191-192, third-party consent searches are not based on an exigency and therefore serve no compelling social goal. Police officers, when faced with the choice of relying on consent by a third party or securing a warrant, should secure a warrant and must therefore accept the risk of error should they instead choose to rely on consent.

II

Our prior cases discussing searches based on third-party consent have never suggested that such searches are “reasonable.” In United States v. Matlock, this Court upheld a warrantless search conducted pursuant to the consent of a *194third party who was living with the defendant. The Court rejected the defendant’s challenge to the search, stating that a person who permits others to have “joint access or control for most purposes . . . assume[s] the risk that [such persons] might permit the common area to be searched.” 415 U. S., at 171, n. 7; see also Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731, 740 (1969) (holding that defendant who left a duffel bag at another’s house and allowed joint use of the bag “assumed the risk that [the person] would allow someone else to look inside”). As the Court’s assumption-of-risk analysis makes clear, third-party consent limits a person’s ability to challenge the reasonableness of the search only because that person voluntarily has relinquished some of his expectation of privacy by sharing access or control over his property with another person.

A search conducted pursuant to an officer’s reasonable but mistaken belief that a third party had authority to consent is thus on an entirely different constitutional footing from one based on the consent of a third party who in fact has such authority. Even if the officers reasonably believed that Fischer had authority to consent, she did not, and Rodriguez’s expectation of privacy was therefore undiminished. Rodriguez accordingly can challenge the warrantless intrusion into his home as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. This conclusion flows directly from Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483 (1964). There, the Court required the suppression of evidence seized in reliance on a hotel clerk’s consent to a war-rantless search of a guest’s room. The Court reasoned that the guest’s right to be free of unwarranted intrusion “was a right. . . which only [he] could waive by word or deed, either directly or through an agent.” Id., at 489. Accordingly, the Court rejected resort to “unrealistic doctrines of ‘apparent authority’ ” as a means of upholding the search to which the guest had not consented. Id., at 488.1

*195III

Acknowledging that the third party in this case lacked authority to consent, the majority seeks to rely on cases suggesting that reasonable but mistaken factual judgments by police will not invalidate otherwise reasonable searches. The majority reads these cases as establishing a “general rule” that “what is generally demanded of the many factual determinations that must regularly be made by agents of the government — whether the magistrate issuing a warrant, the police officer executing a warrant, or the police officer conducting a search or seizure under one of the exceptions to the *196warrant requirement — is not that they always be correct, but that they always be reasonable.” Ante, at 185-186.

The majority’s assertion, however, is premised on the erroneous assumption that third-party consent searches are generally reasonable. The cases the majority cites thus provide no support for its holding. In Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160 (1949), for example, the Court confirmed the unremarkable proposition that police need only probable cause, not absolute certainty, to justify the arrest of a suspect on a highway. As Brinegar makes clear, the possibility of factual error is built into the probable cause standard, and such a standard, by its very definition, will in some cases result in the arrest of a suspect who has not actually committed a crime. Because probable cause defines the reasonableness of searches and seizures outside of the home, a search is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment whenever that standard is met, notwithstanding the possibility of “mistakes” on the part of police. Id., at 176. In contrast, our cases have already struck the balance against warrantless home intrusions in the absence of an exigency. See supra, at 191-192. Because reasonable factual errors by law enforcement officers will not validate unreasonable searches, the reasonableness of the officer’s mistaken belief that the third party had authority to consent is irrelevant.2

*197The majority’s reliance on Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U. S. 79 (1987), is also misplaced. In Garrison, the police obtained a valid warrant for the search of the “third floor apartment” of a building whose third floor in fact housed two apartments. Id., at 80. Although the police had probable cause to search only one of the apartments, they entered both apartments because “[t]he objective facts available to the officers at the time suggested no distinction between [the apartment for which they legitimately had the warrant and the entire third floor].” Id., at 88. The Court held that the officers’ reasonable mistake of fact did not render the search unconstitutional. Id., at 88-89. As in Brinegar, the Court’s decision was premised on the general reasonableness of the type of police action involved. Because searches based on warrants are generally reasonable, the officers’ reasonable mistake of fact did not render their search “unreasonable.” This reasoning is evident in the Court’s conclusion that little would be gained by adopting additional burdens “over and above the bedrock requirement that, with the exceptions we have traced in our cases, the police may conduct searches only pursuant to a reasonably detailed warrant.” Garrison, supra, at 89, n. 14.

Garrison, like Brinegar, thus tells us nothing about the reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment of a warrant-less arrest in the home based on an officer’s reasonable but mistaken belief that the third party consenting to the arrest was empowered to do so. The majority’s glib assertion that “[i]t would be superfluous to multiply” its citations to cases like Brinegar, Hill, and Garrison, ante, at 185, is thus correct, but for a reason entirely different than the majority suggests. Those cases provide no illumination of the issue raised in this case, and further citation to like cases would be *198as superfluous as the discussion on which the majority’s conclusion presently depends.

IV

Our cases demonstrate that third-party consent searches are free from constitutional challenge only to the extent that they rest on consent by a party empowered to do so. The majority’s conclusion to the contrary ignores the legitimate expectations of privacy on which individuals are entitled to rely. That a person who allows another joint access to his property thereby limits his expectation of privacy does not justify trampling the rights of a person who has not similarly relinquished any of his privacy expectation.

Instead of judging the validity of consent searches, as we have in the past, based on whether a defendant has in fact limited his expectation of privacy, the Court today carves out an additional exception to the warrant requirement for third-party consent searches without pausing to consider whether “ ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” Mincey, 437 U. S., at 394 (citations omitted). Where this free-floating creation of “reasonable” exceptions to the warrant requirement will end, now that the Court has departed from the balancing approach that has long been part of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, is unclear. But by allowing a person to be subjected to a warrantless search in his home without his consent and without exigency, the majority has taken away some of the liberty that the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect.

*106Justice Souter

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Fourth Amendment recognizes a valid warrantless entry and search of premises when police obtain the voluntary consent of an occupant who shares, or is reasonably believed to share, authority over the area in common with a co-occupant who later objects to the use of evidence so obtained. Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U. S. 177 (1990); United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974). The question here is whether such an evidentiary seizure is likewise lawful with the permission of one occupant when the other, who later seeks to suppress the evidence, is present at the scene and expressly refuses to consent. We hold that, in the circumstances here at issue, a physically present co-occupant’s stated refusal to permit entry prevails, rendering the warrantless search unreasonable and invalid as to him.

I

Respondent Scott Randolph and his wife, Janet, separated in late May 2001, when she left the marital residence in Americus, Georgia, and went to stay with her parents in Canada, taking their son and some belongings. In July, she returned to the Americus house with the child, though the record does not reveal whether her object was reconciliation or retrieval of remaining possessions.

*107On the morning of July 6, she complained to the police that after a domestic dispute her husband took their son away, and when officers reached the house she told them that her husband was a cocaine user whose habit had caused financial troubles. She mentioned the marital problems, and said that she and their son had only recently returned after a stay of several weeks with her parents. Shortly after the police arrived, Scott Randolph returned and explained that he had removed the child to a neighbor’s house out of concern that his wife might take the boy out of the country again; he denied cocaine use, and countered that it was in fact his wife who abused drugs and alcohol.

One of the officers, Sergeant Murray, went with Janet Randolph to reclaim the child, and when they returned she not only renewed her complaints about her husband’s drug use, but also volunteered that there were “‘items of drug evidence’ ” in the house. Brief for Petitioner 3. Sergeant Murray asked Scott Randolph for permission to search the house, which he unequivocally refused.

The sergeant turned to Janet Randolph for consent to search, which she readily gave. She led the officer upstairs to a bedroom that she identified as Scott’s, where the sergeant noticed a section of a drinking straw with a powdery residue he suspected was cocaine. He then left the house to get an evidence bag from his car and to call the district attorney’s office, which instructed him to stop the search and apply for a warrant. When Sergeant Murray returned to the house, Janet Randolph withdrew her consent. The police took the straw to the police station, along with the Randolphs. After getting a search warrant, they returned to the house and seized further evidence of drug use, on the basis of which Scott Randolph was indicted for possession of cocaine.

He moved to suppress the evidence, as products of a warrantless search of his house unauthorized by his wife’s consent over his express refusal. The trial court denied the *108motion, ruling that Janet Randolph had common authority to consent to the search.

The Court of Appeals of Georgia reversed, 264 Ga. App. 396, 590 S. E. 2d 834 (2003), and was itself sustained by the State Supreme Court, principally on the ground that “the consent to conduct a warrantless search of a residence given by one occupant is not valid in the face of the refusal of another occupant who is physically present at the scene to permit a warrantless search,” 278 Ga. 614, 604 S. E. 2d 835, 836 (2004). The Supreme Court of Georgia acknowledged this Court’s holding in Matlock, 415 U. S. 164, that “the consent of one who possesses common authority over premises or effects is valid as against the absent, nonconsenting person with whom that authority is shared,” id., at 170, and found Matlock distinguishable just because Scott Randolph was not “absent” from the colloquy on which the police relied for consent to make the search. The State Supreme Court stressed that the officers in Matlock had not been “faced with the physical presence of joint occupants, with one consenting to the search and the other objecting.” 278 Ga., at 615, 604 S. E. 2d, at 837. It held that an individual who chooses to live with another assumes a risk no greater than “ 'an inability to control access to the premises during [his] absence,’” ibid, (quoting 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 8.3(d), p. 731 (3d ed. 1996) (hereinafter LaFave)), and does not contemplate that his objection to a request to search commonly shared premises, if made, will be overlooked.

We granted certiorari to resolve a split of authority on whether one occupant may give law enforcement effective consent to search shared premises, as against a co-tenant who is present and states a refusal to permit the search.1 544 U. S. 973 (2005). We now affirm.

*109II

To the Fourth Amendment rule ordinarily prohibiting the warrantless entry of a person’s house as unreasonable per se, Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 586 (1980); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 454-455 (1971), one “jealously and carefully drawn” exception, Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493, 499 (1958), recognizes the validity of searches with the voluntary consent of an individual possessing authority, Rodriguez, 497 U. S., at 181. That person might be the householder against whom evidence is sought, Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 222 (1973), or a fellow occupant who shares common authority over property, when the suspect is absent, Matlock, supra, at 170, and the exception for consent extends even to entries and searches with the permission of a co-occupant whom the police reasonably, but erroneously, believe to possess shared authority as an occupant, Rodriguez, supra, at 186. None of our co-occupant consent-to-search cases, however, has presented the further fact of a second occupant physically present and refusing permission to search, and later moving to suppress evidence so obtained.2 The significance of such a refusal turns on the underpinnings of the co-occupant consent rule, as recognized since Matlock.

A

The defendant in that case was arrested in the yard of a house where he lived with a Mrs. Graff and several of her *110relatives, and was detained in a squad ear parked nearby. When the police went to the door, Mrs. Graff admitted them and consented to a search of the house. 415 U. S., at 166. In resolving the defendant’s objection to use of the evidence taken in the warrantless search, we said that “the consent of one who possesses common authority over premises or effects is valid as against the absent, nonconsenting person with whom that authority is shared.” Id., at 170. Consistent with our prior understanding that Fourth Amendment rights are not limited by the law of property, cf. Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 352-353 (1967), we explained that the third party’s “common authority” is not synonymous with a technical property interest:

“The authority which justifies the third-party consent does not rest upon the law of property, with its attendant historical and legal refinements, but rests rather on mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own right and that the others have assumed the risk that one of their number might permit the common area to be searched.” 415 U. S., at 171, n. 7 (citations omitted).

See also Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731, 740 (1969) (“[I]n allowing [his cousin to share use of a duffel bag] and in leaving it in his house, [the suspect] must be taken to have assumed the risk that [the cousin] would allow someone else to look inside”). The common authority that counts under the Fourth Amendment may thus be broader than the rights accorded by property law, see Rodriguez, supra, at 181-182 (consent is sufficient when given by a person who reasonably appears to have common authority but who, in fact, has no property interest in the premises searched), although its limits, too, reflect specialized tenancy arrangements apparent to the police, see Chapman v. United States, 365 U. S. *111610 (1961) (landlord could not consent to search of tenant’s home).

The constant element in assessing Fourth Amendment reasonableness in the consent cases, then, is the great significance given to widely shared social expectations, which are naturally enough influenced by the law of property, but not controlled by its rules. Cf. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 144, n. 12 (1978) (an expectation of privacy is reasonable if it has “a source outside of the Fourth Amendment, either by reference to concepts of real or personal property law or to understandings that are recognized and permitted by society”). Matlock accordingly not only holds that a solitary co-inhabitant may sometimes consent to a search of shared premises, but stands for the proposition that the reasonableness of such a search is in significant part a function of commonly held understanding about the authority that co-inhabitants may exercise in ways that affect each other’s interests.

B

Matlock’s example of common understanding is readily apparent. When someone comes to the door of a domestic dwelling with a baby at her hip, as Mrs. Graff did, she shows that she belongs there, and that fact standing alone is enough to tell a law enforcement officer or any other visitor that if she occupies the place along with others, she probably lives there subject to the assumption tenants usually make about their common authority when they share quarters. They understand that any one of them may admit visitors, with the consequence that a guest obnoxious to one may nevertheless be admitted in his absence by another. As Matlock put it, shared tenancy is understood to include an “assumption of risk,” on which police officers are entitled to rely, and although some group living together might make an exceptional arrangement that no one could admit a guest without the agreement of all, the chance of such an eccentric scheme is too remote to expect visitors to investigate a particular *112household’s rules before accepting an invitation to come in. So, Matlock relied on what was usual and placed no burden on the police to eliminate the possibility of atypical arrangements, in the absence of reason to doubt that the regular scheme was in place.

It is also easy to imagine different facts on which, if known, no common authority could sensibly be suspected. A person on the scene who identifies himself, say, as a landlord or a hotel manager calls up no customary understanding of authority to admit guests without the consent of the current occupant. See Chapman v. United States, supra (landlord); Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483 (1964) (hotel manager). A tenant in the ordinary course does not take rented premises subject to any formal or informal agreement that the landlord may let visitors into the dwelling, Chapman, supra, at 617, and a hotel guest customarily has no reason to expect the manager to allow anyone but his own employees into his room, see Stoner, supra, at 489; see also United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48, 51 (1951) (hotel staff had access to room for purposes of cleaning and maintenance, but no authority to admit police). In these circumstances, neither state-law property rights, nor common contractual arrangements, nor any other source points to a common understanding of authority to admit third parties generally without the consent of a person occupying the premises. And when it comes to searching through bureau drawers, there will be instances in which even a person clearly belonging on premises as an occupant may lack any perceived authority to consent; “a child of eight might well be considered to have the power to consent to the police crossing the threshold into that part of the house where any caller, such as a pollster or salesman, might well be admitted,” 4 LaFave § 8.4(c), at 207 (4th ed. 2004), but no one would reasonably expect such a child to be in a position to authorize anyone to rummage through his parents’ bedroom.

*113c

Although we have not dealt directly with the reasonableness of police entry in reliance on consent by one occupant subject to immediate challenge by another, we took a step toward the issue in an earlier case dealing with the Fourth Amendment rights of a social guest arrested at premises the police entered without a warrant or the benefit of any exception to the warrant requirement. Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U. S. 91 (1990), held that overnight houseguests have a legitimate expectation of privacy in their temporary quarters because “it is unlikely that [the host] will admit someone who wants to see or meet with the guest over the objection of the guest,” id., at 99. If that customary expectation of courtesy or deference is a foundation of Fourth Amendment rights of a houseguest, it presumably should follow that an inhabitant of shared premises may claim at least as much, and it turns out that the co-inhabitant naturally has an even stronger claim.

To begin with, it is fair to say that a caller standing at the door of shared premises would have no confidence that one occupant’s invitation was a sufficiently good reason to enter when a fellow tenant stood there saying, “stay out.” Without some very good reason, no sensible person would go inside under those conditions. Fear for the safety of the occupant issuing the invitation, or of someone else inside, would be thought to justify entry, but the justification then would be the personal risk, the threats to life or limb, not the disputed invitation.3

The visitor’s reticence without some such good reason would show not timidity but a realization that when people living together disagree over the use of their common quar*114ters, a resolution must come through voluntary accommodation , not by appeals to authority. Unless the people living together fall within some recognized hierarchy, like a household of parent and child or barracks housing military personnel of different grades, there is no societal understanding of superior and inferior, a fact reflected in a standard formulation of domestic property law, that “[e]ach cotenant . . . has the right to use and enjoy the entire property as if he or she were the sole owner, limited only by the same right in the other cotenants.” 7 R. Powell, Powell on Real Property § 50.03[1], p. 50-14 (M. Wolf gen. ed. 2005). The want of any recognized superior authority among disagreeing tenants is also reflected in the law’s response when the disagreements cannot be resolved. The law does not ask who has the better side of the conflict; it simply provides a right to any co-tenant, even the most unreasonable, to obtain a decree partitioning the property (when the relationship is one of co-ownership) and terminating the relationship. See, e. g., 2 H. Tiffany, Real Property §§468, 473, 474, pp. 297, 307-309 (3d ed. 1939 and 2006 Cum. Supp.). And while a decree of partition is not the answer to disagreement among rental tenants, this situation resembles co-ownership in lacking the benefit of any understanding that one or the other rental co-tenant has a superior claim to control the use of the quarters they occupy together. In sum, there is no common understanding that one co-tenant generally has a right or authority to prevail over the express wishes of another, whether the issue is the color of the curtains or invitations to outsiders.

D

Since the co-tenant wishing to open the door to a third party has no recognized authority in law or social practice to prevail over a present and objecting co-tenant, his disputed invitation, without more, gives a police officer no better claim to reasonableness in entering than the officer would have in the absence of any consent at all. Accordingly, in the bal*115ancing of competing individual and governmental interests entailed by the bar to unreasonable searches, Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, 387 U. S. 523, 536-537 (1967), the cooperative occupant’s invitation adds nothing to the government’s side to counter the force of an objecting individual’s claim to security against the government’s intrusion into his dwelling place. Since we hold to the “centuries-old principle of respect for the privacy of the home,” Wilson v. Layne, 526 U. S. 603, 610 (1999), “it is beyond dispute that the home is entitled to special protection as the center of the private lives of our people,” Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U. S. 83, 99 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring). We have, after all, lived our whole national history with an understanding of “the ancient adage that a man’s house is his castle [to the point that t]he poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown,” Miller v. United States, 357 U. S. 301, 307 (1958) (internal quotation marks omitted).4

Disputed permission is thus no match for this central value of the Fourth Amendment, and the State’s other countervailing claims do not add up to outweigh it.5 Yes, we recognize the consenting tenant’s interest as a citizen in bringing crim*116inal activity to light, see Coolidge, 403 U. S., at 488 (“[I]t is no part of the policy underlying the Fourth :.. Amendment] to discourage citizens from aiding to the utmost of their ability in the apprehension of criminals”). And we understand a co-tenant’s legitimate self-interest in siding with the police to deflect suspicion raised by sharing quarters with a criminal, see 4 LaFave § 8.3(d), at 162, n. 72 (“The risk of being convicted of possession of drugs one knows are present and has tried to get the other occupant to remove is by no means insignificant”); cf. Schneckloth, 412 U. S., at 243 (evidence obtained pursuant to a consent search “may insure that a wholly innocent person is not wrongly charged with a criminal offense”).

But society can often have the benefit of these interests without relying on a theory of consent that ignores an inhabitant’s refusal to allow a warrantless search. The co-tenant acting on his own initiative may be able to deliver evidence to the police, Coolidge, supra, at 487-489 (suspect’s wife retrieved his guns from the couple’s house and turned them over to the police), and can tell the police what he knows, for use before a magistrate in getting a warrant.6 The reliance *117on a co-tenant’s information instead of disputed consent accords with the law’s general partiality toward “police action taken under a warrant [as against] searches and seizures without one,” United States v. Ventresca, 380 U. S. 102, 107 (1965); “the informed and deliberate determinations of magistrates empowered to issue warrants as to what searches and seizures are permissible under the Constitution are to be preferred over the hurried action of officers,” United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, 464 (1932).

Nor should this established policy of Fourth Amendment law be undermined by the principal dissent’s claim that it shields spousal abusers and other violent co-tenants who will refuse to allow the police to enter a dwelling when their victims ask the police for help, post, at 138 (opinion of RobEETS, C. J.) (hereinafter the dissent). It is not that the dissent exaggerates violence in the home; we recognize that domestic abuse is a serious problem in the United States. See U. S. Dept, of Justice, National Institute of Justice, P. Tjaden & N. Thoennes, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women 25-26 (2000) (noting that over 20 million women and 6 million men will, in the course of their lifetimes, be the victims of intimate-partner abuse); U. S. Dept, of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States 19 (2003) (finding that nearly 5.3 million intimate-partner victimizations, which result in close to 2 million injuries and 1,300 deaths, occur among women in the United States each year); U. S. Dept, of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crime Data Brief, C. Rennison, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001 (Feb. 2003) (noting that in 2001 intimate-partner violence made up 20% of violent crime against women); see also Becker, The Politics of Women’s *118Wrongs and the Bill of “Rights”: A Bicentennial Perspective, 59 U. Chi. L. Rev. 453, 507-508 (1992) (noting that women may feel physical insecurity in their homes as a result of abuse from domestic partners).

But this case has no bearing on the capacity of the police to protect domestic victims. The dissent’s argument rests on the failure to distinguish two different issues: when the police may enter without committing a trespass, and when the police may enter to search for evidence. No question has been raised, or reasonably could be, about the authority of the police to enter a dwelling to protect a resident from domestic violence; so long as they have good reason to believe such a threat exists, it would be silly to suggest that the police would commit a tort by entering, say, to give a complaining tenant the opportunity to collect belongings and get out safely, or to determine whether violence (or threat of violence) has just occurred or is about to (or soon will) occur, however much a spouse or other co-tenant objected. (And since the police would then be lawfully in the premises, there is no question that they could seize any evidence in plain view or take further action supported by any consequent probable cause, see Texas v. Brown, 460 U. S. 730, 737-739 (1983) (plurality opinion).) Thus, the question whether the police might lawfully enter over objection in order to provide any protection that might be reasonable is easily answered yes. See 4 LaFave § 8.3(d), at 161 (“[E]ven when . . . two persons quite clearly have equal rights in the place, as where two individuals are sharing an apartment on an equal basis, there may nonetheless sometimes exist a basis for giving greater recognition to the interests of one over the other.... [W]here the defendant has victimized the third-party ... the emergency nature of the situation is such that the third-party consent should validate a warrantless search despite defendant’s objections” (internal quotation marks omitted; third omission in original)). The undoubted right of the po*119lice to enter in order to protect a victim, however, has nothing to do with the question in this case, whether a search with the consent of one co-tenant is good against another, standing at the door and expressly refusing consent.7

None of the cases cited by the dissent support its improbable view that recognizing limits on merely evidentiary searches would compromise the capacity to protect a fearful occupant. In the circumstances of those cases, there is no danger that the fearful occupant will be kept behind the closed door of the house simply because the abusive tenant refuses to consent to a search. See United States v. Donlin, 982 F. 2d 31, 32 (CA1 1992) (victimized individual was already outside of her apartment when police arrived and, for all intents and purposes, within the protective custody of law enforcement officers); United States v. Hendrix, 595 F. 2d 883, 885-886 (CADC 1979) (per curiam) (even if the consent of the threatened co-occupant did not justify a warrantless search, the police entry was nevertheless allowable on exigent circumstances grounds); People v. Sanders, 904 P. 2d 1311, 1313-1315 (Colo. 1995) (en banc) (victimized individual gave her consent to search away from her home and was not present at the time of the police visit; alternatively, exigent circumstances existed to satisfy the warrantless exception); Brandon v. State, 778 P. 2d 221, 223-224 (Alaska App. 1989) (victimized individual consented away from her home and was not present at the time of the police visit); United States v. Davis, 290 F. 3d 1239, 1241 (CA10 2002) (immediate harm extinguished after husband “order[ed]” wife out of the home).

*120The dissent’s red herring aside, we know, of course, that alternatives to disputed consent will not always open the door to search for evidence that the police suspect is inside. The consenting tenant may simply not disclose enough information, or information factual enough, to add up to a showing of probable cause, and there may be no exigency to justify fast action. But nothing in social custom or its reflection in private law argues for placing a higher value on delving into private premises to search for evidence in the face of disputed consent, than on requiring clear justification before the government searches private living quarters over a resident’s objection. We therefore hold that a warrantless search of a shared dwelling for evidence over the express refusal of consent by a physically present resident cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the basis of consent given to the police by another resident.8

E

There are two loose ends, the first being the explanation given in Matlock for the constitutional sufficiency of a co-tenant’s consent to enter and search: it “rests ... on mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own right... .” 415 U. S., at 171, n. 7. If Matlock’s co-tenant is giving permission “in his own right,” how can his “own right” be eliminated by another tenant’s objection? The answer appears in the very footnote from which the quoted statement is taken: the “right” to admit the police to which Matlock refers is not an enduring and enforceable ownership right as understood by the *121private law of property, but is instead the authority recognized by customary social usage as having a substantial bearing on Fourth Amendment reasonableness in specific circumstances. Thus, to ask whether the consenting tenant has the right to admit the police when a physically present fellow tenant objects is not to question whether some property right may be divested by the mere objection of another. It is, rather, the question whether customary social understanding accords the consenting tenant authority powerful enough to prevail over the co-tenant’s objection. The Matlock Court did not purport to answer this question, a point made clear by another statement (which the dissent does not quote): the Court described the co-tenant’s consent as good against “the absent, nonconsenting” resident. Id., at 170.

The second loose end is the significance of Matlock and Rodriguez after today’s decision. Although the Matlock defendant was not present with the opportunity to object, he was in a squad car not far away; the Rodriguez defendant was actually asleep in the apartment, and the police might have roused him with a knock on the door before they entered with only the consent of an apparent co-tenant. If those cases are not to be undercut by today’s holding, we have to admit that we are drawing a fine line; if a potential defendant with self-interest in objecting is in fact at the door and objects, the co-tenant’s permission does not suffice for a reasonable search, whereas the potential objector, nearby but not invited to take part in the threshold colloquy, loses out.

This is the line we draw, and we think the formalism is justified. So long as there is no evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection, there is practical value in the simple clarity of complementary rules, one recognizing the co-tenant’s permission when there is no fellow occupant on hand, the other according dispositive weight to the fellow occupant’s contrary indication when he *122expresses it. For the very reason that Rodriguez held it would be unjustifiably impractical to require the police to take affirmative steps to confirm the actual authority of a consenting individual whose authority was apparent, we think it would needlessly limit the capacity of the police to respond to ostensibly legitimate opportunities in the field if we were to hold that reasonableness required the police to take affirmative steps to find a potentially objecting co-tenant before acting on the permission they had already received. There is no ready reason to believe that efforts to invite a refusal would make a difference in many cases, whereas every co-tenant consent case would turn into a test about the adequacy of the police’s efforts to consult with a potential objector. Better to accept the formalism of distinguishing Matlock from this case than to impose a requirement, time consuming in the field and in the courtroom, with no apparent systemic justification. The pragmatic decision to accept the simplicity of this line is, moreover, supported by the substantial number of instances in which suspects who are asked for permission to search actually consent,9 albeit imprudently, a fact that undercuts any argument that the police should try to locate a suspected inhabitant because his denial of consent would be a foregone conclusion.

Ill

This case invites a straightforward application of the rule that a physically present inhabitant’s express refusal of consent to a police search is dispositive as to him, regardless of *123the consent of a fellow occupant. Scott Randolph’s refusal is clear, and nothing in the record justifies the search on grounds independent of Janet Randolph’s consent. The State does not argue that she gave any indication to the police of a need for protection inside the house that might have justified entry into the portion of the premises where the police found the powdery straw (which, if lawfully seized, could have been used when attempting to establish probable cause for the warrant issued later). Nor does the State claim that the entry and search should be upheld under the rubric of exigent circumstances, owing to some apprehension by the police officers that Scott Randolph would destroy evidence of drug use before any warrant could be obtained.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia is therefore affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

Justice Stevens,

concurring.

The study of history for the purpose of ascertaining the original understanding of constitutional provisions is much like the study of legislative history for the purpose of ascertaining the intent of the lawmakers who enact statutes. In both situations the facts uncovered by the study are usually relevant but not necessarily dispositive. This case illustrates why even the most dedicated adherent to an approach to constitutional interpretation that places primary reliance on the search for original understanding would recognize the relevance of changes in our society.

At least since 1604 it has been settled that in the absence of exigent circumstances, a government agent has no right to enter a “house” or “castle” unless authorized to do so by a valid warrant. See Semayne’s Case, 5 Co. Rep. 91a, 77 Eng. Rep. 194 (K. B.). Every occupant of the home has a *124right — protected by the common law for centuries and by the Fourth Amendment since 1791 — to refuse entry. When an occupant gives his or her consent to enter, he or she is waiving a valuable constitutional right. To be sure that the waiver is voluntary, it is sound practice — a practice some Justices of this Court thought necessary to make the waiver voluntary1 — for the officer to advise the occupant of that right.2 The issue in this case relates to the content of the advice that the officer should provide when met at the door by a man and a woman who are apparently joint tenants or joint owners of the property.

In the 18th century, when the Fourth Amendment was adopted, the advice would have been quite different from what is appropriate today. Given the then-prevailing dramatic differences between the property rights of the husband and the far lesser rights of the wife, only the consent of the husband would matter. Whether “the master of the house” consented or objected, his decision would control. Thus if “original understanding” were to govern the outcome of this case, the search was clearly invalid because the husband did not consent. History, however, is not dispositive because it is now clear, as a matter of constitutional law, that *125the male and the female are equal partners. Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971).

In today’s world the only advice that an officer could properly give should make it clear that each of the partners has a constitutional right that he or she may independently assert or waive. Assuming that both spouses are competent, neither one is a master possessing the power to override the other’s constitutional right to deny entry to their castle.

With these observations, I join the Court’s opinion.

Justice Breyer,

concurring.

If Fourth Amendment law forced us to choose between two bright-line rules, (1) a rule that always found one tenant’s consent sufficient to justify a search without a warrant and (2) a rule that never did, I believe we should choose the first. That is because, as The Chief Justice’s dissent points out, a rule permitting such searches can serve important law enforcement needs (for example, in domestic abuse cases), and the consenting party’s joint tenancy diminishes the objecting party’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

But the Fourth Amendment does not insist upon bright-line rules. Rather, it recognizes that no single set of legal rules can capture the ever-changing complexity of human life. It consequently uses the general terms “unreasonable searches and seizures.” And this Court has continuously emphasized that “Reasonableness ... is measured . . . by examining the totality of the circumstances.” Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U. S. 33, 39 (1996); see also Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U. S. 119, 136 (2000) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); Florida v. Bostick, 501 U. S. 429, 439 (1991); Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U. S. 567, 572-573 (1988); Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491, 506 (1983) (plurality opinion).

The circumstances here include the following: The search at issue was a search solely for evidence. The objecting *126party was present and made his objection known clearly and directly to the officers seeking to enter the house. The officers did not justify their search on grounds of possible evidence destruction. Cf. Thornton v. United States, 541 U. S. 615, 620-622 (2004); Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Assn., 489 U. S. 602, 623 (1989); Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, 770-771 (1966). And, as far as the record reveals, the officers might easily have secured the premises and sought a warrant permitting them to enter. See Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U. S. 326 (2001). Thus, the “totality of the circumstances” present here do not suffice to justify abandoning the Fourth Amendment’s traditional hostility to police entry into a home without a warrant.

I stress the totality of the circumstances, however, because, were the circumstances to change significantly, so should the result. The Court’s opinion does not apply where the objector is not present “and objecting].” Ante, at 121.

Moreover, the risk of an ongoing crime or other exigent circumstance can make a critical difference. Consider, for example, instances of domestic abuse. See ante, at 117-118. “Family disturbance calls . . . constitute the largest single category of calls received by police departments each year.” Mederer & Gelles, Compassion or Control: Intervention in Cases of Wife Abuse, 4 J. of Interpersonal Violence 25 (Mar. 1989) (emphasis deleted); see also, e. g., Office of the Attorney General, California Criminal Justice Statistics Center, Domestic Violence Related Calls for Assistance, 1987-2003, County by Year, http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/publications/misc/ dvsr/tabs/ 8703.pdf (as visited Mar. 1, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file) (providing data showing that California police received an average of 207,848 domestic violence related calls each year); Cessato, Defenders Against Domestic Abuse, Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2002, p. B8 (“In the District [of Columbia], police report that almost half of roughly 39,000 violent crime calls received in 2000 involved domestic violence”); Zorza, Women Battering: High Costs *127and the State of the Law, Clearinghouse Review 383, 385 (Special Issue 1994) (“One-third of all police time is spent responding to domestic disturbance calls”). And, law enforcement officers must be able to respond effectively when confronted with the possibility of abuse.

If a possible abuse victim invites a responding officer to enter a home or consents to the officer’s entry request, that invitation (or consent) itself could reflect the victim’s fear about being left alone with an abuser. It could also indicate the availability of evidence, in the form of an immediate willingness to speak, that might not otherwise exist. In that context, an invitation (or consent) would provide a special reason for immediate, rather than later, police entry. And, entry following invitation or consent by one party ordinarily would be reasonable even in the face of direct objection by the other. That being so, contrary to The Chief Justice’s suggestion, post, at 139, today’s decision will not adversely affect ordinary law enforcement practices.

Given the case-specific nature of the Court’s holding, and with these understandings, I join the Court’s holding and its opinion.

Chief Justice Roberts,

with whom

Justice Scalia joins, dissenting.

The Court creates constitutional law by surmising what is typical when a social guest encounters an entirely atypical situation. The rule the majority fashions does not implement the high office of the Fourth Amendment to protect privacy, but instead provides protection on a random and happenstance basis, protecting, for example, a co-occupant who happens to be at the front door when the other occupant consents to a search, but not one napping or watching television in the next room. And the cost of affording such random protection is great, as demonstrated by the recurring cases in which abused spouses seek to authorize police entry into a home they share with a nonconsenting abuser.

*128The correct approach to the question presented is clearly mapped out in our precedents: The Fourth Amendment protects privacy. If an individual shares information, papers, or places with another, he assumes the risk that the other person will in turn share access to that information or those papers or places with the government. And just as an individual who has shared illegal plans or incriminating documents with another cannot interpose an objection when that other person turns the information over to the government, just because the individual happens to be present at the time, so too someone who shares a place with another cannot interpose an objection when that person decides to grant access to the police, simply because the objecting individual happens to be present.

A warrantless search is reasonable if police obtain the voluntary consent of a person authorized to give it. Co-occupants have “assumed the risk that one of their number might permit [a] common area to be searched.” United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164, 171, n. 7 (1974). Just as Mrs. Randolph could walk upstairs, come down, and turn her husband’s cocaine straw over to the police, she can consent to police entry and search of what is, after all, her home, too.

I

In Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U. S. 177 (1990), this Court stated that “[w]hat [a person] is assured by the Fourth Amendment ... is not that no government search of his house will occur unless he consents; but that no such search will occur that is ‘unreasonable.’” Id., at 183. One element that can make a warrantless government search of a home “‘reasonable’” is voluntary consent. Id., at 184; Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 219 (1973). Proof of voluntary consent “is not limited to proof that consent was given by the defendant,” but the government “may show that permission to search was obtained from a third party who possessed common authority over or other sufficient re*129lationship to the premises.” Matlock, supra, at 171. Today’s opinion creates an exception to this otherwise clear rule: A third-party consent search is unreasonable, and therefore constitutionally impermissible, if the co-occupant against whom evidence is obtained was present and objected to the entry and search.

This exception is based on what the majority describes as “widely shared social expectations” that “when people living together disagree over the use of their common quarters, a resolution must come through voluntary accommodation.” Ante, at 111, 113-114. But this fundamental predicate to the majority’s analysis gets us nowhere: Does the objecting co-tenant accede to the consenting co-tenant’s wishes, or the other way around? The majority’s assumption about voluntary accommodation simply leads to the common stalemate of two gentlemen insisting that the other enter a room first.

Nevertheless, the majority is confident in assuming — confident enough to incorporate its assumption into the Constitution — that an invited social guest who arrives at the door of a shared residence, and is greeted by a disagreeable co-occupant shouting “‘stay out,’” would simply go away. Ante, at 113. The Court observes that “no sensible person would go inside under those conditions,” ibid., and concludes from this that the inviting co-occupant has no “authority” to insist on getting her way over the wishes of her co-occupant, ante, at 114. But it seems equally accurate to say — based on the majority’s conclusion that one does not have a right to prevail over the express wishes of his co-occupant — that the objector has no “authority” to insist on getting his way over his co-occupant’s wish that her guest be admitted.

The fact is that a wide variety of differing social situations can readily be imagined, giving rise to quite different social expectations. A relative or good friend of one of two feuding roommates might well enter the apartment over the objection of the other roommate. The reason the invitee *130appeared at the door also affects expectations: A guest who came to celebrate an occupant’s birthday, or one who had traveled some distance for a particular reason, might not readily turn away simply because of a roommate’s objection. The nature of the place itself is also pertinent: Invitees may react one way if the feuding roommates share one room, differently if there are common areas from which the objecting roommate could readily be expected to absent himself. Altering the numbers might well change the social expectations: Invitees might enter if two of three co-occupants encourage them to do so, over one dissenter.

The possible scenarios are limitless, and slight variations in the fact pattern yield vastly different expectations about whether the invitee might be expected to enter or to go away. Such shifting expectations are not a promising foundation on which to ground a constitutional rule, particularly because the majority has no support for its basic assumption — that an invited guest encountering two disagreeing co-occupants would flee — beyond a hunch about how people would typically act in an atypical situation.

And in fact the Court has not looked to such expectations to decide questions of consent under the Fourth Amendment, but only to determine when a search has occurred and whether a particular person has standing to object to a search. For these latter inquiries, we ask whether a person has a subjective expectation of privacy in a particular place, and whether “the expectation [is] one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring); see Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U. S. 91, 95-96, 100 (1990) (extending Katz test to standing inquiry). But the social expectations concept has not been applied to all questions arising under the Fourth Amendment, least of all issues of consent. A criminal might have a strong expectation that his longtime confidant will not allow the government to listen to their private conversations, but however profound his shock might be *131upon betrayal, government monitoring with the confidant’s consent is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745, 752 (1971) (plurality opinion).

The majority suggests that “widely shared social expectations” are a “constant element in assessing Fourth Amendment reasonableness,” ante, at 111 (citing Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 144, n. 12 (1978)), but that is not the case; the Fourth Amendment precedents the majority cites refer instead to a “legitimate expectation of privacy,” id., at 143, n. 12 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted). Whatever social expectation the majority seeks to protect, it is not one of privacy. The very predicate giving rise to the question in cases of shared information, papers, containers, or places is that privacy has been shared with another. Our common social expectations may well be that the other person will not, in turn, share what we have shared with them with another — including the police — but that is the risk we take in sharing. If two friends share a locker and one keeps contraband inside, he might trust that his friend will not let others look inside. But by sharing private space, privacy has “already been frustrated” with respect to the locker-mate. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U. S. 109, 117 (1984). If two roommates share a computer and one keeps pirated software on a shared drive, he might assume that his roommate will not inform the government. But that person has given up his privacy with respect to his roommate by saving the software on their shared computer.

A wide variety of often subtle social conventions may shape expectations about how we act when another shares with us what is otherwise private, and those conventions go by a variety of labels — courtesy, good manners, custom, protocol, even honor among thieves. The Constitution, however, protects not these but privacy, and once privacy has been shared, the shared information, documents, or places remain private only at the discretion of the confidant.

*132II

Our cases reflect this understanding. In United States v. White, we held that one party to a conversation can consent to government eavesdropping, and statements made by the other party will be admissible at trial. 401 U. S., at 752. This rule is based on privacy: “Inescapably, one contemplating illegal activities must realize and risk that his companions may be reporting to the police.... [I]f he has no doubts, or allays them, or risks what doubt he has, the risk is his.” Ibid.

The Court has applied this same analysis to objects and places as well. In Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U. S. 731 (1969), a duffel bag “was being used jointly” by two cousins. Id., at 740. The Court held that the consent of one was effective to result in the seizure of evidence used against both: “[I]n allowing [his cousin] to use the bag and in leaving it in his house, [the defendant] must be taken to have assumed the risk that [his cousin] would allow someone else to look inside.” Ibid.

As the Court explained in United States v. Jacobsen, supra:

“It is well settled that when an individual reveals private information to another, he assumes the risk that his confidant will reveal that information to the authorities, and if that occurs the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit governmental use of that information. Once frustration of the original expectation of privacy occurs, the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit governmental use of the now nonprivate information: ‘This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in a third party will not be betrayed.’ ” *133Id., at 117 (quoting United States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435, 443 (1976)).

The same analysis applies to the question whether our privacy can be compromised by those with whom we share common living space. If a person keeps contraband in common areas of his home, he runs the risk that his co-occupants will deliver the contraband to the police. In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971), Mrs. Coolidge retrieved four of her husband’s guns and the clothes he was wearing the previous night and handed them over to police. We held that these items were properly admitted at trial because “when Mrs. Coolidge of her own accord produced the guns and clothes for inspection, ... it was not incumbent on the police to stop her or avert their eyes.” Id., at 489.

Even in our most private relationships, our observable actions and possessions are private at the discretion of those around us. A husband can request that his wife not tell a jury about contraband that she observed in their home or illegal activity to which she bore witness, but it is she who decides whether to invoke the testimonial marital privilege. Trammel v. United States, 445 U. S. 40, 53 (1980). In Trammel, we noted that the former rule prohibiting a wife from testifying about her husband’s observable wrongdoing at his say-so “goes far beyond making ‘every man’s house his castle,’ and permits a person to convert his house into ‘a den of thieves.’” Id., at 51-52 (quoting 5 J. Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence 340 (1827)).

There is no basis for evaluating physical searches of shared space in a manner different from how we evaluated the privacy interests in the foregoing cases, and in fact the Court has proceeded along the same lines in considering such searches. In Matlock, police arrested the defendant in the front yard of a house and placed him in a squad car, and then obtained permission from Mrs. Graff to search a shared bedroom for evidence of Matlock’s bank robbery. 415 U. S., at 166. Police certainly could have assumed that Matlock *134would have objected were he consulted as he sat handcuffed in the squad car outside. And in Rodriguez, where Miss Fischer offered to facilitate the arrest of her sleeping boyfriend by admitting police into an apartment she apparently shared with him, 497 U. S., at 179, police might have noted that this entry was undoubtedly contrary to Rodriguez’s social expectations. Yet both of these searches were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment because Mrs. Graff had authority, and Miss Fischer apparent authority, to admit others into areas over which they exercised control, despite the almost certain wishes of their present co-occupants.

The common thread in our decisions upholding searches conducted pursuant to third-party consent is an understanding that a person “assume[s] the risk” that those who have access to and control over his shared property might consent to a search. Matlock, 415 U. S., at 171, n. 7. In Matlock, we explained that this assumption of risk is derived from a third party’s “joint access or control for most purposes” of shared property. Ibid. And we concluded that shared use of property makes it “reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own right.” Ibid.

In this sense, the risk assumed by a joint occupant is comparable to the risk assumed by one who reveals private information to another. If a person has incriminating information, he can keep it private in the face of a request from police to share it, because he has that right under the Fifth Amendment. If a person occupies a house with incriminating information in it, he can keep that information private in the face of a request from police to search the house, because he has that right under the Fourth Amendment. But if he shares the information — or the house — with another, that other can grant access to the police in each instance.1

*135To the extent a person wants to ensure that his possessions will be subject to a consent search only due' to his own consent, he is free to place these items in an area over which others do not share access and control, be it a private room or a locked suitcase under a bed. Mr. Randolph acknowledged this distinction in his motion to suppress, where he differentiated his law office from the rest of the Randolph house by describing it as an area that “was solely in his control and dominion.” App. 3. As to a “common area,” however, co-occupants with “joint access or control” may consent to an entry and search. Matlock, supra, at 171, n. 7.

By emphasizing the objector’s presence and noting an occupant’s understanding that obnoxious guests might “be admitted in [one’s] absence,” ante, at 111, the majority appears to resurrect an agency theory of consent suggested in our early cases. See Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483, 489 (1964) (stating that a hotel clerk could not consent to a search of a guest’s room because the guest had not waived his rights *136“by word or deed, either directly or through an agent”); Chapman v. United States, 365 U. S. 610, 616-617 (1961). This agency theory is belied by the facts of Matlock and Rodriguez — both defendants were present but simply not asked for consent — and the Court made clear in those cases that a co-occupant’s authority to consent rested not on an absent occupant’s delegation of choice to an agent, but on the consenting co-occupant’s “joint access or control” of the property. Matlock, supra, at 171, n. 7; see Rodriguez, supra, at 181; United States v. McAlpine, 919 F. 2d 1461, 1464, n. 2 (CA10 1990) (“[A]gency analysis [was] put to rest by the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Matlock”).

The law acknowledges that although we might not expect our friends and family to admit the government into common areas, sharing space entails risk. A person assumes the risk that his co-occupants — just as they might report his illegal activity or deliver his contraband to the government — might consent to a search of areas over which they have access and control. See United States v. Karo, 468 U. S. 705, 726 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (finding it a “relatively easy case ... when two persons share identical, overlapping privacy interests in a particular place, container, or conversation. Here both share the power to surrender each other’s privacy to a third party”).

Ill

The majority states its rule as follows: “[A] warrantless search of a shared dwelling for evidence over the express refusal of consent by a physically present resident cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the basis of consent given to the police by another resident.” Ante, at 120.

Just as the source of the majority’s rule is not privacy, so too the interest it protects cannot reasonably be described as such. That interest is not protected if a co-owner happens to be absent when the police arrive, in the backyard gardening, asleep in the next room, or listening to music *137through earphones so that only his co-occupant hears the knock on the door. That the rule is so random in its application confirms that it bears no real relation to the privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. What the majority’s rule protects is not so much privacy as the good luck of a co-owner who just happens to be present at the door when the police arrive. Usually when the development of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence leads to such arbitrary lines, we take it as a signal that the rules need to be rethought. See California v. Acevedo, 500 U. S. 565, 574, 580 (1991). We should not embrace a rule at the outset that its sponsors appreciate will result in drawing fine, formalistic lines. See ante, at 121.

Rather than draw such random and happenstance lines— and pretend that the Constitution decreed them — the more reasonable approach is to adopt a rule acknowledging that shared living space entails a limited yielding of privacy to others, and that the law historically permits those to whom we have yielded our privacy to in turn cooperate with the government. Such a rule flows more naturally from our casés concerning Fourth Amendment reasonableness and is logically grounded in the concept of privacy underlying that Amendment.

The scope of the majority’s rule is not only arbitrary but obscure as well. The majority repeats several times that a present co-occupant’s refusal to permit entry renders the search unreasonable and invalid “as to him.” Ante, at 106, 120, 122. This implies entry and search would be reasonable “as to” someone else, presumably the consenting co-occupant and any other absent co-occupants. The normal Fourth Amendment rule is that items discovered in plain view are admissible if the officers were legitimately on the premises; if the entry and search were reasonable “as to” Mrs. Randolph, based on her consent, it is not clear why the cocaine straw should not be admissible “as to” Mr. Randolph, as discovered in plain view during a legitimate search “as *138to” Mrs. Randolph. The majority’s differentiation between entry focused on discovering whether domestic violence has occurred (and the consequent authority to seize items in plain view), and entry focused on searching for evidence of other crime, is equally puzzling. See ante, at 118-119. This Court has rejected subjective motivations of police officers in assessing Fourth Amendment questions, see Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 812-813 (1996), with good reason: The police do not need a particular reason to ask for consent to search, whether for signs of domestic violence or evidence of drug possession.

While the majority’s rule protects something random, its consequences are particularly severe. The question presented often arises when innocent co-tenants seek to disassociate or protect themselves from ongoing criminal activity. See, e. g., United States v. Hendrix, 595 F. 2d 883, 884 (CADC 1979) (per curiam) (wife asked police “ ‘to get her baby and take [a] sawed-off shotgun out of her house’”); People v. Cosme, 48 N. Y. 2d 286, 288-289, 293, 397 N. E. 2d 1319, 1320, 1323 (1979) (woman asked police to remove cocaine and a gun from a shared closet); United States v. Botsch, 364 F. 2d 542, 547 (CA2 1966). Under the majority’s rule, there will be many cases in which a consenting co-occupant’s wish to have the police enter is overridden by an objection from another present co-occupant. What does the majority imagine will happen, in a case in which the consenting co-occupant is concerned about the other’s criminal activity, once the door clicks shut? The objecting co-occupant may pause briefly to decide whether to destroy any evidence of wrongdoing or to inflict retribution on the consenting co-occupant first, but there can be little doubt that he will attend to both in short order. It is no answer to say that the consenting co-occupant can depart with the police; remember that it is her home, too, and the other co-occupant’s very presence, which allowed him to object, may also prevent the consenting co-occupant from doing more than urging the police to enter.

*139Perhaps the most serious consequence of the majority’s rule is its operation in domestic abuse situations, a context in which the present question often arises. See Rodriguez, 497 U. S., at 179; United States v. Donlin, 982 F. 2d 31 (CA1 1992); Hendrix, supra; People v. Sanders, 904 P. 2d 1311 (Colo. 1995) (en banc); Brandon v. State, 778 P. 2d 221 (Alaska App. 1989). While people living together might typically be accommodating to the wishes of their co-tenants, requests for police assistance may well come from co-inhabitants who are having a disagreement. The Court concludes that because “no sensible person would go inside” in the face of disputed consent, ante, at 113, and the consenting co-tenant thus has “no recognized authority” to insist on the guest’s admission, ante, at 114, a “police officer [has] no better claim to reasonableness in entering than the officer would have in the absence of any consent at all,” ibid. But the police officer’s superior claim to enter is obvious: Mrs. Randolph did not invite the police to join her for dessert and coffee; the officer’s precise purpose in knocking on the door was to assist with a dispute between the Randolphs — one in which Mrs. Randolph felt the need for the protective presence of the police. The majority’s rule apparently forbids police from entering to assist with a domestic dispute if the abuser whose behavior prompted the request for police assistance objects.2

*140The majority acknowledges these concerns, but dismisses them on the ground that its rule can be expected to give rise to exigent situations, and police can then rely on an exigent circumstances exception to justify entry. Ante, at 116-117, n. 6. This is a strange way to justify a rule, and the fact that alternative justifications for entry might arise does not show that entry pursuant to consent is unreasonable. In addition, it is far from clear that an exception for emergency entries suffices to protect the safety of occupants in domestic disputes. See, e. g., United States v. Davis, 290 F. 3d 1239, 1240-1241 (CA10 2002) (finding no exigent circumstances justifying entry when police responded to a report of domestic abuse, officers heard no noise upon arrival, defendant told officers that his wife was out of town, and wife then appeared at the door seemingly unharmed but resisted husband’s efforts to close the door).

Rather than give effect to a consenting spouse’s authority to permit entry into her house to avoid such situations, the majority again alters established Fourth Amendment rules to defend giving veto power to the objecting spouse. In response to the concern that police might be turned away under its rule before entry can be justified based on exigency, the majority creates a new rule: A “good reason” to enter, coupled with one occupant’s consent, will ensure that a police officer is “lawfully in the premises.” Ante, at 118. As support for this “consent plus a good reason” rule, the majority cites a treatise, which itself refers only to emergency entries. Ibid, (citing 4 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 8.3(d), p. 161 (4th ed. 2004)). For the sake of defending what it concedes are fine, formalistic lines, the ma*141jority spins out an entirely new framework for analyzing exigent circumstances. Police may now enter with a “good reason” to believe that “violence (or threat of violence) has just occurred or is about to (or soon will) occur.” Ante, at 118. And apparently a key factor allowing entry with a “good reason” short of exigency is the very consent of one co-occupant the majority finds so inadequate in the first place.

The majority’s analysis alters a great deal of established Fourth Amendment law. The majority imports the concept of “social expectations,” previously used only to determine when a search has occurred and whether a particular person has standing to object to a search, into questions of consent. Ante, at 111, 113. To determine whether entry and search are reasonable, the majority considers a police officer’s subjective motive in asking for consent, which we have otherwise refrained from doing in assessing Fourth Amendment questions. Ante, at 118. And the majority creates a new exception to the warrant requirement to justify warrantless entry short of exigency in potential domestic abuse situations. Ibid.

Considering the majority’s rule is solely concerned with protecting a person who happens to be present at the door when a police officer asks his co-occupant for consent to search, but not one who is asleep in the next room or in the backyard gardening, the majority has taken a great deal of pain in altering Fourth Amendment doctrine, for precious little (if any) gain in privacy. Perhaps one day, as the consequences of the majority’s analytic approach become clearer, today’s opinion will be treated the same way the majority treats our opinions in Matlock and Rodriguez — as a “loose end” to be tied up. Ante, at 121.

One of the concurring opinions states that if it had to choose between a rule that a co-tenant’s consent was valid or a rule that it was not, it would choose the former. Ante, at 125 (opinion of Breyer, J.). The concurrence advises, *142however, that “no single set of legal rules can capture the ever-changing complexity of human life,” ibid., and joins what becomes the majority opinion, “[g]iven the case-specific nature of the Court’s holding,” ante, at 127. What the majority establishes, in its own terms, is “the rule that a physically present inhabitant’s express refusal of consent to a police search is dispositive as to him, regardless of the consent of a fellow occupant.” Ante, at 122-123 (emphasis added). The concurrence joins with the apparent “understandin[g]” that the majority’s “rule” is not a rule at all, but simply a “case-specific” holding. Ante, at 127 (opinion of Breyer, J.). The end result is a complete lack of practical guidance for the police in the field, let alone for the lower courts.

* *

Our third-party consent cases have recognized that a person who shares common areas with others “assume[s] the risk that one of their number might permit the common area to be searched.” Matlock, 415 U. S., at 171, n. 7. The majority reminds us, in high tones, that a man’s home is his castle, ante, at 115, but even under the majority’s rule, it is not his castle if he happens to be absent, asleep in the keep, or otherwise engaged when the constable arrives at the gate. Then it is his co-owner’s castle. And, of course, it is not his castle if he wants to consent to entry, but his co-owner objects. Rather than constitutionalize such an arbitrary rule, we should acknowledge that a decision to share a private place, like a decision to share a secret or a confidential document, necessarily entails the risk that those with whom we share may in turn choose to share — for their own protection or for other reasons — with the police.

I respectfully dissent.

Justice Scalia,

dissenting.

I join the dissent of The Chief Justice, but add these few words in response to Justice Stevens’ concurrence.

*143It is not as clear to me as it is to Justice Stevens that, at the time the Fourth Amendment was adopted, a police officer could enter a married woman’s home over her objection, and could not enter with only her consent. Nor is it clear to me that the answers to these questions depended solely on who owned the house. It is entirely clear, however, that if the matter did depend solely on property rights, a latter-day alteration of property rights would also produce a latter-day alteration of the Fourth Amendment outcome— without altering the Fourth Amendment itself.

Justice Stevens’ attempted critique of originalism confuses the original import of the Fourth Amendment with the background sources of law to which the Amendment, on its original meaning, referred. From the date of its ratification until well into the 20th century, violation of the Amendment was tied to common-law trespass. See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 31-32 (2001); see also California v. Acevedo, 500 U. S. 565, 581, 583 (1991) (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment). On the basis of that connection, someone who had power to license the search of a house by a private party could authorize a police search. See 1 Restatement of Torts § 167, and Comment b (1934); see also Williams v. Howard, 110 S. C. 82, 96 S. E. 251 (1918); Fennemore v. Armstrong, 29 Del. 35, 96 A. 204 (Super. Ct. 1915). The issue of who could give such consent generally depended, in turn, on “historical and legal refinements” of property law. United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164, 171, n. 7 (1974). As property law developed, individuals who previously could not authorize a search might become able to do so, and those who once could grant such consent might no longer have that power. But changes in the law of property to which the Fourth Amendment referred would not alter the Amendment’s meaning: that anyone capable of authorizing a search by a private party could consent to a warrantless search by the police.

*144There is nothing new or surprising in the proposition that our unchanging Constitution refers to other bodies of law that might themselves change. The Fifth Amendment provides, for instance, that “private property” shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation”; but it does not purport to define property rights. We have consistently held that “the existence of a property interest is determined by reference to ‘existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.’” Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156, 164 (1998) (quoting Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 577 (1972)). The same is true of the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause’s protection of “property.” See Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U. S. 748, 756 (2005). This reference to changeable law presents no problem for the originalist. No one supposes that the meaning of the Constitution changes as States expand and contract property rights. If it is indeed true, therefore, that a wife in 1791 could not authorize the search of her husband’s house, the fact that current property law provides otherwise is no more troublesome for the originalist than the well-established fact that a State must compensate its takings of even those property rights that did not exist at the time of the founding.

In any event, Justice Stevens’ panegyric to the equal rights of women under modern property law does not support his conclusion that “[ajssuming . . . both spouses are competent, neither one is a master possessing the power to override the other’s constitutional right to deny entry to their castle.” Ante, at 125. The issue at hand is what to do when there is a conflict between two equals. Now that women have authority to consent, as Justice Stevens claims men alone once did, it does not follow that the spouse who refuses consent should be the winner of the contest. Justice Stevens could just as well have followed the same historical developments to the opposite conclusion: Now that *145“the male and the female are equal partners,” ibid., and women can consent to a search of their property, men can no longer obstruct their wishes. Men and women are no more “equal” in the majority’s regime, where both sexes can veto each other’s consent, than on the dissent’s view, where both sexes cannot.

Finally, I must express grave doubt that today’s decision deserves Justice Stevens’ celebration as part of the forward march of women’s equality. Given the usual patterns of domestic violence, how often can police be expected to encounter the situation in which a man urges them to enter the home while a woman simultaneously demands that they stay out? The most common practical effect of today’s decision, insofar as the contest between the sexes is concerned, is to give men the power to stop women from allowing police into their homes — which is, curiously enough, precisely the power that Justice Stevens disapprovingly presumes men had in 1791.

Justice Thomas,

dissenting.

The Court has long recognized that “[i]t is an act of responsible citizenship for individuals to give whatever information they may have to aid in law enforcement.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 477-478 (1966). Consistent with this principle, the Court held in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971), that no Fourth Amendment search occurs where, as here, the spouse of an accused voluntarily leads the police to potential evidence of wrongdoing by the accused. Id., at 486-490. Because Coolidge squarely controls this case, the Court need not address whether police could permissibly have conducted a general search of the Randolph home, based on Mrs. Randolph’s consent. I respectfully dissent.

In the instant case, Mrs. Randolph told police responding to a domestic dispute that respondent was using a substan*146tial quantity of cocaine. Upon police request, she consented to a general search of her residence to investigate her statements. However, as the Court’s recitation of the facts demonstrates, ante, at 107, the record is clear that no such general search occurred. Instead, Sergeant Brett Murray asked Mrs. Randolph where the cocaine was located, and she showed him to an upstairs bedroom, where he saw the “piece of cut straw” on a dresser. Corrected Tr. of Motion to Suppression Hearing in Case No. 2001R-699 (Super. Ct. Sumter Cty., Ga., Oct. 3, 2002), pp. 8-9. Upon closer examination, Sergeant Murray observed white residue on the straw, and concluded the straw had been used for ingesting cocaine. Id., at 8. He then collected the straw and the residue as evidence. Id., at 9.

Sergeant Murray’s entry into the Randolphs’ home at the invitation of Mrs. Randolph to be shown evidence of respondent’s cocaine use does not constitute a Fourth Amendment search. Under this Court’s precedents, only the action of an agent of the government can constitute a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, because that Amendment “was intended as a restraint upon the activities of sovereign authority, and was not intended to be a limitation upon other than governmental agencies.” Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U. S. 465, 475 (1921) (emphasis added). See also Coolidge, 403 U. S., at 487. Applying this principle in Coolidge, the Court held that when a citizen leads police officers into a home shared with her spouse to show them evidence relevant to their investigation into a crime, that citizen is not acting as an agent of the police, and thus no Fourth Amendment search has occurred. Id., at 488-498.

Review of the facts in Coolidge clearly demonstrates that it governs this case. While the police interrogated Coolidge as part of their investigation into a murder, two other officers were sent to his house to speak with his wife. Id., at 485. During the course of questioning Mrs. Coolidge, the *147police asked whether her husband owned any guns. Id., at 486. Mrs. Coolidge replied in the affirmative, and offered to retrieve the weapons for the police, apparently operating under the assumption that doing so would help to exonerate her husband. Ibid. The police accompanied Mrs. Coolidge to the bedroom to collect the guns, as well as clothing that Mrs. Coolidge told them her husband had been wearing the night of the murder. Ibid.

Before this Court, Coolidge argued that the evidence of the guns and clothing should be suppressed as the product of an unlawful search because Mrs. Coolidge was acting as an “‘instrument,’” or agent, of the police by complying with a “ ‘demand’ ” made by them. Id., at 487. The Court recognized that, had Mrs. Coolidge sought out the guns to give to police wholly on her own initiative, “there can be no doubt under existing law that the articles would later have been admissible in evidence.” Ibid. That she did so in cooperation with police pursuant to their request did not transform her into their agent; after all, “it is no part of the policy underlying the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to discourage citizens from aiding to the utmost of their ability in the apprehension of criminals.” Id., at 488. Because the police were “acting normally and properly” when they asked about any guns, and questioning Mrs. Coolidge about the clothing was “logical and in no way coercive,” the Fourth Amendment did not require police to “avert their eyes” when Mrs. Coolidge produced the guns and clothes for inspection.1 Id., at 488-489.

*148This case is indistinguishable from Coolidge, compelling the conclusion that Mrs. Randolph was not acting as an agent of the police when she admitted Sergeant Murray into her home and led him to the incriminating evidence.2 Just as Mrs. Coolidge could, of her own accord, have offered her husband’s weapons and clothing to the police without implicating the Fourth Amendment, so too could Mrs. Randolph have simply retrieved the straw from the house and given it to Sergeant Murray. Indeed, the majority appears to concede as much. Ante, at 116 (“The co-tenant acting on his own initiative may be able to deliver evidence to the police, Coolidge, supra, at 487-489 ..., and can tell the police what he knows, for use before a magistrate in getting a warrant”). Drawing a constitutionally significant distinction between what occurred here and Mrs. Randolph’s independent production of the relevant evidence is both inconsistent with Coolidge and unduly formalistic.3

Accordingly, the trial court appropriately denied respondent’s motion to suppress the evidence Mrs. Randolph pro*149vided to the police and the evidence obtained as a result of the consequent search warrant. I would therefore reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia.