The fourth amendment's warrant requirement is puzzling in at least two ways. First, its very existence seems odd. Legal standards are usually enforced through after-the-fact review, for the good and simple reason that before-the-fact review tends to be quite costly. The second puzzle involves the debate, in both the cases and the academic literature, about the doctrines that determine warrants' legal effect and define when they must be used. That debate has been filled with apparent contradictions. These seeming inconsistencies stem from the lack of any working theory of what warrants are supposed to accomplish. My aim in this Article is to supply three such theories, all of which turn on the relation of warrants to remedies. The key point is that the function of the warrant requirement depends on the choice between damages actions and an exclusionary rule as the remedy for fourth amendment violations.
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