Case Note · Constitutional Law · 1765
Entick v Carrington
Executive officers have no power to enter private property or seize papers unless that power is conferred by a specific positive law. What is not authorised is forbidden.
- Citation
- (1765) 19 St Tr 1029; 95 ER 807
- Court
- Court of Common Pleas
- Year
- 1765
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
Facts
The King's messengers, acting on a general warrant issued by the Earl of Halifax (then Secretary of State), broke into the house of John Entick, a writer suspected of seditious libel, and seized his books and papers. Entick sued in trespass.
Issue
Did the Secretary of State possess a lawful power to issue such a warrant, authorising the seizure of a subject's papers in the absence of any statute conferring it?
Decision
Lord Camden CJ held for Entick. There was no statutory or common-law authority for the warrant. The executive could not invent powers of search and seizure simply because the security of the state was said to require them. The judgment contains one of the most-quoted lines in English public law.
If it is law, it will be found in our books. If it is not to be found there, it is not law.
Significance
A foundational case for the British conception of the rule of law. Entick establishes the proposition, central to modern public law, that the executive possesses only such powers as positive law confers on it, and that the residue belongs to the subject. Echoes of Entick run through every modern case on prerogative power, from Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374 (the GCHQ case) to R (Miller) v The Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41. It is also the textbook foundation for the law of trespass to land where the trespasser is the state.
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