Mb. Justice Stewakt

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case raises basic questions concerning the permissible scope under the Fourth Amendment of a search incident to a lawful arrest.

The relevant facts are essentially undisputed. Late in the afternoon of September 13, 1965, three police officers arrived at the Santa Ana, California, home of the petitioner with a warrant authorizing his arrest for the burglary of a coin shop. The officers knocked on the door, identified themselves to the petitioner’s wife, and asked if they might come inside. She ushered them into the house, where they waited 10 or 15 minutes until the petitioner returned home from work. When the petitioner entered the house, one of the officers handed him the arrest warrant and asked for permission to “look around.” The petitioner objected, but was advised that *754“on the basis of the lawful arrest,” the officers would nonetheless conduct a search. No search warrant had been issued.

Accompanied by the petitioner’s wife, the officers then looked through the entire three-bedroom house, including the attic, the garage, and a small workshop. In some rooms the search was relatively cursory. In the master bedroom and sewing room, however, the officers directed the petitioner’s wife to open drawers and “to physically move contents of the drawers from side to side so that [they] might view any items that would have come from [the] burglary.” After completing the search, they seized numerous items — primarily coins, but also several medals, tokens, and a few other objects. The entire search took between 45 minutes and an hour.

At the petitioner’s subsequent state trial on two charges of burglary, the items taken from his house were admitted into evidence against him, over his objection that they had been unconstitutionally seized. He was convicted, and the judgments of conviction were affirmed by both the California Court of Appeal, 61 Cal. Rptr. 714, and the California Supreme Court, 68 Cal. 2d 436, 439 P. 2d 333. Both courts accepted the petitioner’s contention that the arrest warrant was invalid because the supporting affidavit was set out in conclusory terms,1 but held that since the arresting officers had procured the warrant “in good faith,” and since in any event they had had sufficient information to constitute probable cause for the petitioner’s arrest, that arrest had been lawful. From this conclusion the appellate courts went on to hold that the search of the petitioner’s home *755had been justified, despite the absence of a search warrant, on the ground that it had been incident to a valid arrest. We granted certiorari in order to consider the petitioner’s substantial constitutional claims. 393 U. S. 958.

Without deciding the question, we proceed on the hypothesis that the California courts were correct in holding that the arrest of the petitioner was valid under the Constitution. This brings us directly to the question whether the warrantless search of the petitioner’s entire house can be constitutionally justified as incident to that arrest. The decisions of this Court bearing upon that question have been far from consistent, as even the most cursory review makes evident.

Approval of a warrantless search incident to a lawful arrest seems first to have been articulated by the Court in 1914 as dictum in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, in which the Court stated:

“What then is the present case? Before answering that inquiry specifically, it may be well by a process of exclusion to state what it is not. It is not an assertion of the right on the part of the Government, always recognized under English and American law, to search the person of the accused when legally arrested to discover and seize the fruits or evidences of crime.” Id., at 392.

That statement made no reference to any right to search the place where an arrest occurs, but was limited to a right to search the “person.” Eleven years later the case of Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, brought the following embellishment of the Weeks statement:

“When a man is legally arrested for an offense, whatever is found upon his person or in his control which it is unlawful for him to have and which may be used to prove the offense may be seized and held *756as evidence in the prosecution.” Id., at 158. (Emphasis added.)

Still, that assertion too was far from a claim that the “place” where one is arrested may be searched so long as the arrest is valid. Without explanation, however, the principle emerged in expanded form a few months later in Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20 — although still by way of dictum:

“The right without a search warrant contemporaneously to search persons lawfully arrested while committing crime and to search the place where the arrest is made in order to find and seize things connected with the crime as its fruits or as the means by which it was committed, as well as weapons and other things to effect an escape from custody, is not to be doubted. See Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 158; Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 392.” 269 U. S., at 30.

And in Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, two years later, the dictum of Agnello appeared to be the foundation of the Court’s decision. In that case federal agents had secured a search, warrant authorizing the seizure of liquor and certain articles used in its manufacture. When they arrived at the premises to be searched, they saw “that the place was used for retailing and drinking intoxicating liquors.” Id., at 194. They proceeded to arrest the person in charge and to execute the warrant. In searching a closet for the items listed in the warrant they came across an incriminating ledger, concededly not covered by the warrant, which they also seized. The Court upheld the seizure of the ledger by holding that since the agents had made a lawful arrest, “[t]hey had a right without a warrant contemporaneously to search the place in order to find and seize the things used to carry on the criminal enterprise.” Id., at 199.

*757That the Marron opinion did not mean all that it seemed to say became evident, however, a few years later in Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344, and United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452. In each of those cases the opinion of the Court was written by Mr. Justice Butler, the author of the opinion in Marron. In Go-Bart, agents had searched the office of persons whom they had lawfully arrested,2 and had taken several papers from a desk, a safe, and other parts of the office. The Court noted that no crime had been committed in the agents’ presence, and that although the agent in charge “had an abundance of information and time to swear out a valid [search] warrant, he failed to do so.” 282 U. S., at 358. In holding the search and seizure unlawful, the Court stated:

“Plainly the case before us is essentially different from Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192. There, officers executing a valid search warrant for intoxicating liquors found and arrested one Birdsall who in pursuance of a conspiracy was actually engaged in running a saloon. As an incident to the arrest they seized a ledger in a closet where the liquor or some of it was kept and some bills beside the cash register. These things were visible and accessible and in the offender’s immediate custody. There was no threat of force or general search or rummaging of the place.” 282 U. S., at 358.

This limited characterization of Marron was reiterated in Lefkowitz, a case in which the Court held unlawful a search of desk drawers and a cabinet despite the fact that the search had accompanied a lawful arrest. 285 U. S., at 465.

The limiting views expressed in Go-Bart and Lefkowitz were thrown to the winds, however, in Harris v. United *758 States, 331 U. S. 145, decided in 1947. In that case, officers had obtained a warrant for Harris’ arrest on the basis of his alleged involvement with the cashing and interstate transportation of a forged check. He was arrested in the living room of his four-room apartment, and in an attempt to recover two canceled checks thought to have been used in effecting the forgery, the officers undertook a thorough search of the entire apartment. Inside a desk drawer they found a sealed envelope marked “George Harris, personal papers.” The envelope, which was then torn open, was found to contain altered Selective Service documents, and those documents were used to secure Harris’ conviction for violating the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. The Court rejected Harris’ Fourth Amendment claim, sustaining the search as “incident to arrest.” Id., at 151.

Only a year after Harris, however, the pendulum swung again. In Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699, agents raided the site of an illicit distillery, saw one of several conspirators operating the still, and arrested him, contemporaneously “seiz[ing] the illicit distillery.” Id., at 702. The Court held that the arrest and others made subsequently had been valid, but that the unexplained failure of the agents to procure a search warrant — in spite of the fact that they had had more than enough time before the raid to do so — rendered the search unlawful. The opinion stated:

“It is a cardinal rule that, in seizing goods and articles, law enforcement agents must secure and use search warrants wherever reasonably practicable. . . . This rule rests upon the desirability of having magistrates rather than police officers determine when searches and seizures are permissible and what limitations should be placed upon such activities. ... To provide the necessary security against unreasonable intrusions upon the private lives of *759individuals, the framers of the Fourth Amendment required adherence to judicial processes wherever possible. And subsequent history has confirmed the wisdom of that requirement.

“A search or seizure without a warrant as an incident to a lawful arrest has always been considered to be a strictly limited right. It grows out of the inherent necessities of the situation at the time of the arrest. But there must be something more in the way of necessity than merely a lawful arrest.” Id., at 705, 708.

In 1950, two years after Trupiano,3 came United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, the decision upon which California primarily relies in the case now before us. In Rabinowitz, federal authorities had been informed that the defendant was dealing in stamps bearing forged overprints. On the basis of that information they secured a warrant for his arrest, which they executed at his one-room business office. At the time of the arrest, the officers “searched the desk, safe, and file cabinets in the office for about an hour and a half,” id., at 59, and seized 573 stamps with forged overprints. The stamps were admitted into evidence at the defendant’s trial, and this Court affirmed his conviction, rejecting the contention that the warrantless search had been unlawful. The Court held that the search in its entirety fell within the principle giving law enforcement authorities “[t]he right 'to search the place where the arrest is made in order to find and seize things connected with the crime ....’” Id., at 61. Harris was regarded as “ample authority” for that conclusion. Id., at 63. The opinion rejected the rule of Trupiano that “in seizing goods and articles, law enforcement agents must secure and use search war*760rants wherever reasonably practicable.” The test, said the Court, “is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable.” Id., at 66.

Rabinowitz has come to stand for the proposition, inter alia, that a warrantless search “incident to a lawful arrest” may generally extend to the area that is considered to be in the “possession” or under the “control” of the person arrested.4 And it was on the basis of that proposition that the California courts upheld the search of the petitioner’s entire house in this case. That doctrine, however, at least in the broad sense in which it was applied by the California courts in this case, can withstand neither historical nor rational analysis.

Even limited to its own facts, the Rabinowitz decision was, as we have seen, hardly founded on an unimpeachable line of authority. As Mr. Justice Frankfurter commented in dissent in that case, the “hint” contained in Weeks was, without persuasive justification, “loosely turned into dictum and finally elevated to a decision.” 339 U. S., at 76. And the approach taken in cases such as Go-Bart, Lefkowitz, and Trupiano was essentially disregarded by the Rabinowitz Court.

Nor is the rationale by which the State seeks here to sustain the search of the petitioner’s house supported by a reasoned view of the background and purpose of the Fourth Amendment. Mr. Justice Frankfurter wisely pointed out in his Rabinowitz dissent that the Amendment’s proscription of “unreasonable searches and sei*761zures” must be read in light of “the history that gave rise to the words” — a history of “abuses so deeply felt by the Colonies as to be one of the potent causes of the Revolution . . . .” 339 U. S., at 69. The Amendment was in large part a reaction to the general warrants and war-rantless searches that had so alienated the colonists and had helped speed the movement for independence.5 In the scheme of the Amendment, therefore, the requirement that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,” plays a crucial part. As the Court put it in McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451:

“We are not dealing with formalities. 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. . . . And so the Constitution requires a magistrate to pass on the desires of the police before they violate the privacy of the home. We cannot be true to that constitutional 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.” Id., at 455-456.

*762Even in the Agnello case the Court relied upon the rule that “[b]elief, however well founded, that an article sought is concealed in a dwelling house furnishes no justification for a search of that place without a warrant. And such searches are held unlawful notwithstanding facts unquestionably showing probable cause.” 269 U. S., at 33. Clearly, the general requirement that a search warrant be obtained is not lightly to be dispensed with, and “the burden is on those seeking [an] exemption [from the requirement] to show the need for it . . . .” United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48, 51.

Only last Term in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, we emphasized that “the police must, whenever practicable, obtain advance judicial approval of searches and seizures through the warrant procedure,” id., at 20,6 and that “[t]he scope of [a] search must be ‘strictly tied to and justified by’ the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.” Id., at 19. The search undertaken by the officer in that “stop and frisk” case was sustained under that test, because it was no more than a “protective . . . search for weapons.” Id., at 29. But in a companion case, Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, we applied the same standard to another set of facts and reached a contrary result, holding that a policeman’s action in thrusting his hand into a suspect’s pocket had been neither motivated by nor limited to the objective of protection.7 Rather, the search had been made in order to find narcotics, which were in fact found.

A similar analysis underlies the “search incident to arrest” principle, and marks its proper extent. When an *763arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer’s safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. A gun on a table or in a drawer in front of one who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested. There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area “within his immediate control” — construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.

There is no comparable justification, however, for routinely searching any room other than that in which an arrest occurs — or, for that matter, for searching through all the desk drawers or other closed or concealed areas in that room itself. Such searches, in the absence of well-recognized exceptions, may be made only under the authority of a search warrant.8 The “adherence to judicial processes” mandated by the Fourth Amendment requires no less.

This is the principle that underlay our decision in Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364. In that case three men had been arrested in a parked car, which had later been towed to a garage and searched by police. We held the search to have been unlawful under the Fourth Amendment, despite the contention that it had *764been incidental to a valid arrest. Our reasoning was straightforward:

“The rule allowing contemporaneous searches is justified, for example, by the need to seize weapons and other things which might be used to assault an officer or effect an escape, as well as by the need to prevent the destruction of evidence of the crime— things which might easily happen where the weapon or evidence is on the accused’s person or under his immediate control. But these justifications are absent where a search is remote in time or place from the arrest.” Id., at 367.9

The same basic principle was reflected in our opinion last Term in Sibron. That opinion dealt with Peters v. New York, No. 74, as well as with Sibron’s case, and Peters involved a search that we upheld as incident to a proper arrest. We sustained the search, however, only because its scope had been “reasonably limited” by the “need to seize weapons” and “to prevent the destruction of evidence,” to which Preston had referred. We emphasized that the arresting officer “did not engage in an unrestrained and thoroughgoing examination of Peters and his personal effects. He seized him to cut short his flight, and he searched him primarily for weapons.” 392 U. S., at 67.

It is argued in the present case that it is “reasonable” to search a man’s house when he is arrested in it. But that argument is founded on little more than a subjective view regarding the acceptability of certain sorts of police *765conduct, and not on considerations relevant to Fourth Amendment interests. Under such an unconfined analysis, Fourth Amendment protection in this area would approach the evaporation point. It is not easy to explain why, for instance, it is less subjectively “reasonable” to search a man’s house when he is arrested on his front lawn — or just down the street — than it is when he happens to be in the house at the time of arrest.10 As Mr. Justice Frankfurter put it:

“To say that the search must be reasonable is to require some criterion of reason. It is no guide at all either for a jury or for district judges or the police to say that an 'unreasonable search’ is forbidden— that the search must be reasonable. What is the test of reason which makes a search reasonable? The test is the reason underlying and expressed by the Fourth Amendment: the history and the experience which it embodies and the safeguards afforded by it against the evils to which it was a response.” United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S., at 83 (dissenting opinion).

Thus, although “[t]he recurring questions of the reasonableness of searches” depend upon “the facts and circumstances — -the total atmosphere of the case,” id., at 63, 66 (opinion of the Court), those facts and circumstances must be viewed in the light of established Fourth Amendment principles.

*766It would be possible, of course, to draw a line between Rabinowitz and Harris on the one hand, and this case on the other. For Rabinowitz involved a single room, and Harris a four-room apartment, while in the case before us an entire house was searched. But such a distinction would be highly artificial. The rationale that allowed the searches and seizures in Rabinowitz and Harris would allow the searches and seizures in this case. No consideration relevant to the Fourth Amendment suggests any point of rational limitation, once the search is allowed to go beyond the area from which the person arrested might obtain weapons or evidentiary items.11 The only reasoned distinction is one between a search of the person arrested and the area within his reach on the one hand, and more extensive searches on the other.12

*767The petitioner correctly points out that one result of decisions such as Rabinowitz and Harris is to give law enforcement officials the opportunity to engage in searches not justified by probable cause, by the simple expedient of arranging to arrest suspects at home rather than elsewhere. We do not suggest that the petitioner is necessarily correct in his assertion that such a strategy was utilized here,13 but the fact remains that had he been arrested earlier in the day, at his place of employment rather than at home, no search of his house could have been made without a search warrant. In any event, even apart from the possibility of such police tactics, the general point so forcefully made by Judge Learned Hand in United States v. Kirschenblatt, 16 F. 2d 202, remains:

“After arresting a man in his house, to rummage at will among his papers in search of whatever will convict him, appears to us to be indistinguishable from what might be done under a general warrant; indeed, the warrant would give more protection, for presumably it must be issued by a magistrate. True, by hypothesis the power would not exist, if the supposed offender were not found on the prem*768ises; but it is small consolation to know that one’s papers are safe only so long as one is not at home.” Id., at 203.

Rabinowitz and Harris have been the subject of critical commentary for many years,14 and have been relied upon less and less in our own decisions.15 It is time, for the reasons we have stated, to hold that on their own facts, and insofar as the principles they stand for are inconsistent with those that we have endorsed today, they are no longer to be followed.

Application of sound Fourth Amendment principles to the facts of this case produces a clear result. The search here went far beyond the petitioner’s person and the area from within which he might have obtained either a weapon or something that could have been used as evidence against him. There was no constitutional justification, in the absence of a search warrant, for extending the search beyond that area. The scope of the search was, therefore, “unreasonable” under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the petitioner’s conviction cannot stand.16 Reversed.

*769Mr. Justice Harlan,

concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion with these remarks concerning a factor to which the Court has not alluded.

The only thing that has given me pause in voting to overrule Harris and Rabinowitz is that as a result of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961), and Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23 (1963), every change in Fourth Amendment law must now be obeyed by state officials facing widely different problems of local law enforcement. We simply do not know the extent to which cities and towns across the Nation are prepared to administer the greatly expanded warrant system which will be required by today’s decision; nor can we say with assurance that in each and every local situation, the warrant requirement plays an essential role in the protection of those fundamental liberties protected against state infringement by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Thus, one is now faced with the dilemma, envisioned in my separate opinion in Ker, 374 U. S., at 45-46, of choosing between vindicating sound Fourth Amendment principles at the possible expense of state concerns, long recognized to be consonant with the Fourteenth Amendment before Mapp and Ker came on the books, or diluting the Federal Bill of Rights in the interest of leaving the States at least some elbow room in their methods of criminal law enforcement. No comparable dilemma exists, of course, with respect to the impact of today’s decision within the federal system itself.

This federal-state factor has not been an easy one for me to resolve, but in the last analysis I cannot in good conscience vote to perpetuate bad Fourth Amendment law.

I add only that this case, together with Benton v. Maryland, post, p. 784, North Carolina v. Pearce, ante, p. 711, and Simpson v. Rice, ante, p. 711, all decided *770today, serve to point up, as few other cases have, the profound changes that the “incorporation doctrine” has wrought both in the workings of our federal system and upon the adjudicative processes of this Court.

Me. Justice White,

with whom Mr. Justice Black joins,

dissenting.

Few areas of the law have been as subject to shifting constitutional standards over the last 50 years as that of the search “incident to an arrest.” There has been a remarkable instability in this whole area, which has seen at least four major shifts in emphasis. Today’s opinion makes an untimely fifth. In my view, the Court should not now abandon the old rule.

I.

The modern odyssey of doctrine in this field is detailed in the majority opinion. It began with Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914), where the Court paused to note what the case before it was not. “It is not an assertion of the right on the part of the Government, always recognized under English and American law, to search the person of the accused when legally arrested to discover and seize the fruits or evidences of crime. This right has been uniformly maintained in many cases. ... Nor is it the case of burglar’s tools or other proofs of guilt found upon his arrest within the control of the accused.” Id., at 392. (Emphasis added.) This scope of search incident to arrest, extending to all items under the suspect’s “control,” was reaffirmed in a dictum in Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 158 (1925). Accord, Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 30 (1925) (holding that “the place where the arrest is made” may be searched “is not to be doubted”). The rule was reaffirmed in Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, 199 (1927), where the Court asserted that authority *771to search incident to an arrest “extended to all parts of the premises used for the unlawful purpose.”

Within five years, this rule was qualified by two Prohibition Act cases, Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344, 356-358 (1931), and United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, 463-467 (1932).

If Go-Bart and Lefkowitz represented a retreat from the rule of Weeks, Carroll, Agnello, and Marron, the vigor of the earlier rule was reaffirmed in Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 145 (1947), which has, but for one brief interlude, clearly been the law until today. The very next Term after Harris, in Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699 (1948), the Court held unjustifiable the seizure of a still incident to the arrest of a man at the still site, even though the still was contraband, had been visible through an open door before entering the premises to be “searched,” and although a crime was being committed in the officers’ presence. Accord, that year, McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451 (1948) (gambling game seen through transom before entry). Less than two years later, however, the Court returned to the Harris rule in United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56 (1950), where the Court held that the reasonableness of a search does not depend upon the practicability of obtaining a search warrant, and that the fact of a valid arrest is relevant to reasonableness. Trupiano was pro tanto overruled.

Such rapid reversals have occurred before,1 but they are rare. Here there had been two about-faces, one following hard upon the other. Justice Frankfurter objected in this language: “Especially ought the Court not reenforce needlessly the instabilities of our day by giving fair ground for the belief that Law is the expression of *772chance — for instance, of unexpected changes in the Court’s composition and the contingencies in the choice of successors.” 339 U. S., at 86. Since that time, the rule of Weeks, Marron, Harris, and Rabinowitz has clearly been the law. E. g., Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217 (1960) (Frankfurter, J., writing for the Court) ; Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23 (1963).2

II.

The rule which has prevailed, but for very brief or doubtful periods of aberration, is that a search incident to an arrest may extend to those areas under the control of the defendant and where items subject to constitutional seizure may be found. The justification for this rule must, under the language of the Fourth Amendment, lie in the reasonableness of the rule. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 9 (1968); Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40 (1968); Elkins v. United States, 364 U. S. 206, 222 (1960). The 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.”

In terms, then, the Court must decide whether a given search is reasonable. The Amendment does not proscribe “warrantless searches” but instead it proscribes “unrea*773sonable searches” and this Court has never held nor does the majority today assert that warrantless searches are necessarily unreasonable.

Applying this reasonableness test to the area of searches incident to arrests, one thing is clear at the outset. Search of an arrested man and of the items within his immediate reach must in almost every case be reasonable. There is always a danger that the suspect will try to escape, seizing concealed weapons with which to overpower and injure the arresting officers, and there is a danger that he may destroy evidence vital to the prosecution. Circumstances in which these justifications would not apply are sufficiently rare that inquiry is not made into searches of this scope, which have been considered reasonable throughout.

The justifications which make such a search reasonable obviously do not apply to the search of areas to which the accused does not have ready physical access. This is not enough, however, to prove such searches unconstitutional. The Court has always held, and does not today deny, that when there is probable cause to search and it is “impracticable” for one reason or another to get a search warrant, then a warrantless search may be reasonable. E. g., even Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699 (1948). This is the case whether an arrest was made at the time of the search or not.3

This is not to say that a search can be reasonable without regard to the probable cause to believe that seizable items are on the premises. But when there are exigent circumstances, and probable cause, then the search may be made without a warrant, reasonably. An *774arrest itself may often create an emergency situation making it impracticable to obtain a warrant before embarking on a related search. Again assuming that there is probable cause to search premises at the spot where a suspect is arrested, it seems to me unreasonable to require the police to leave the scene in order to obtain a search warrant when they are already legally there to make a valid arrest, and when there must almost always be a strong possibility that confederates of the arrested man will in the meanwhile remove the items for which the police have probable cause to search. This must so often be the case that it seems to me as unreasonable to require a warrant for a search of the premises as to require a warrant for search of the person and his very immediate surroundings.

This case provides a good illustration of my point that it is unreasonable to require police to leave the scene of an arrest in order to obtain a search warrant when they already have probable cause to search and there is a clear danger that the items for which they may reasonably search will be removed before they return with a warrant. Petitioner was arrested in his home after an arrest whose validity will be explored below, but which I will now assume was valid. There was doubtless probable cause not only to arrest petitioner, but also to search his house. He had obliquely admitted, both to a neighbor and to the owner of the burglarized store, that he had committed the burglary.4 In light of this, and the fact that the neighbor had seen other *775admittedly stolen property in petitioner’s house, there was surely probable cause on which a warrant could have issued to search the house for the stolen coins. Moreover, had the police simply arrested petitioner, taken him off to the station house, and later returned with a warrant,5 it seems very likely that petitioner’s wife, who in view of petitioner’s generally garrulous nature must have known of the robbery, would have removed the coins. For the police to search the house while the evidence they had probable cause to search out and seize was still there cannot be considered unreasonable.6

*776III.

This line of analysis, supported by the precedents of this Court, hinges on two assumptions. One is that the arrest of petitioner without a valid warrant7 was constitutional as the majority assumes; the other is that the police were not required to obtain a search warrant in advance, even though they knew that the effect of the arrest might well be to alert petitioner’s wife that the coins had better be removed soon. Thus it is necessary to examine the constitutionality of the arrest since if it was illegal, the exigent circumstances which it created may not, as the consequences of a lawless act, be used to justify the contemporaneous warrantless search. But for the arrest, the warrantless search may not be justified.8 And if circumstances can justify the warrantless arrest, it would be strange to say that the Fourth Amendment bars the warrantless search, regardless of the circumstances, since the invasion and disruption of a man’s life and privacy which stem from his arrest are ordinarily far greater than the relatively minor intrusions attending a search of his premises.

Congress has expressly authorized a wide range of officials to make arrests without any warrant in criminal cases. United States Marshals have long had this power,9 which is also vested in the agents of the Federal *777Bureau of Investigation,10 and in the Secret Service11 and the narcotics law enforcement agency.12 That warrant-less arrest power may apply even when there is time to get a warrant without fear that the suspect may escape is made perfectly clear by the legislative history of the statute granting arrest power to the FBI.

In United States v. Coplon, 185 F. 2d 629, 633-636 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1950), the court held that an arrest and search were invalid because there was an insufficient showing of danger of escape, and therefore there was time to obtain a warrant. The opinion, written by Judge Learned Hand and joined by Judges Swan and Frank, reviewed the common-law power of arrest, which permitted arrests for felonies committed in the past “if [the officer] had reasonable ground to suppose that the person arrested had committed the felony.” However, the court concluded that this power of warrantless arrest had been limited by the congressional requirement that there must be a “likelihood of the person escaping before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”

The next month the Congress was moved by this very decision to amend the law, consciously deleting the language upon which Judge Hand had relied so as to make it clear that warrantless arrests were authorized even if there was time to procure a warrant. Act of January 10, 1951, c. 1221, § 1, 64 Stat. 1239; H. R. Rep. No. 3228, 81st Cong., 2d Sess. (1950).13 Thereupon, the Court of *778Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, passing on the very same arrest which had induced the congressional action, held that this “unmistakable” revision made it clear that there was in the FBI a power to arrest without warrant even when there was time to procure one. For this reason, the court upheld the arrest and contemporaneous search. Coplon v. United States, 89 U. S. App. D. C. 103, 191 F. 2d 749 (1951). Certiorari was denied in both Coplon cases. 342 U. S. 920, 926 (1952). Moreover, the statute under which the FBI exercises that power was later said by this Court to state the constitutional standard, Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 100 (1959), since it requires “reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing” a felony, 18 U. S. C. § 3052, before a warrantless arrest may be made. And the Court today has declined to review a warrantless arrest under the narcotics agent statute. Jamison v. United States, post, p. 986. See also my dissent in Shipley v. California, post, p. 821.

The judgment of Congress is that federal law enforcement officers may reasonably make warrantless arrests upon probable cause, and no judicial experience suggests that this judgment is infirm. Indeed, past cases suggest precisely the contrary conclusion. The validity of federal arrests was long governed by state law, United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 589-592 (1948), and no requirement that warrants be sought whenever there is time to do so was imposed either by common-law history14 or by decisions of this Court. This Court has upheld an execu*779tive arrest warrant for deportation, permitting the arrest to occur without prior judicial scrutiny, Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217 (1960). And this Court has regularly affirmed the validity of warrantless arrests without any indication whatever that there was no time to get a warrant, and indeed where all the circumstances pointed to the opposite conclusion. E. g., Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23 (1963); Draper v. United States, 358 U. S. 307 (1959). The lower federal courts have certainly been of the view that warrants are unnecessary even where there is time to obtain them. Dailey v. United States, 261 F. 2d 870 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1958), cert. denied, 359 U. S. 969 (1959) (statutory warrantless arrest by federal narcotics agents); Smith v. United States, 103 U. S. App. D. C. 48, 52, 254 F. 2d 751, 755, cert. denied, 357 U. S. 937 (1958); Mills v. United States, 90 U. S. App. D. C. 365, 196 F. 2d 600, cert. denied, 344 U. S. 826 (1952) (sub silentio).

In light of the uniformity of judgment of the Congress, past judicial decisions, and common practice rejecting the proposition that arrest warrants are essential wherever it is practicable to get them, the conclusion is inevitable that such arrests and accompanying searches are reasonable, at least until experience teaches the contrary. It must very often be the case that by the time probable cause to arrest a man is accumulated, the man is aware of police interest in him or for other good reasons is on the verge of flight. Moreover, it will likely be very difficult to determine the probability of his flight. Given this situation, it may be best in all cases simply to allow the arrest if there is probable cause, especially since that issue can be determined very shortly after the arrest.

Nor are the stated assumptions at all fanciful. It was precisely these facts which moved the Congress to grant to the FBI the power to arrest without a warrant without any showing of probability of flight. Both the *780Senate and House committees quoted the letter of the Acting Deputy Attorney General, Peter Campbell Brown, who in asking for the new legislation asserted: “Although it is recognized that in any felony case the person to be arrested may attempt to flee, it is also recognized that in any such case in which the defendant is arrested without a warrant in an emergency situation, such defendant may be able to present a rather convincing argument that he did not intend to flee.” S. Rep. No. 2464, 81st Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1950); H. R. Rep. No. 3228, 81st Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1950). Some weight should be accorded this factual judgment by law enforcement officials, adopted by the Congress.

IV.

If circumstances so often require the warrantless arrest that the law generally permits it, the typical situation will find the arresting officers lawfully on the premises without arrest or search warrant. Like the majority, I would permit the police to search the person of a suspect and the area under his immediate control either to assure the safety of the officers or to prevent the destruction of evidence. And like the majority, I see nothing in the arrest alone furnishing probable cause for a search of any broader scope. However, where as here the existence of probable cause is independently established and would justify a warrant for a broader search for evidence, I would follow past cases and permit such a search to be carried out without a warrant, since the fact of arrest supplies an exigent circumstance justifying police action before the evidence can be removed, and also alerts the suspect to the fact of the search so that he can immediately seek judicial determination of probable cause in an adversary proceeding, and appropriate redress.

This view, consistent with past cases, would not authorize the general search against which the Fourth *?Amendment was meant to guard, nor would it broaden or render uncertain in any way whatsoever the scope of searches permitted under the Fourth Amendment. The issue in this case is not the breadth of the search, since there was clearly probable cause for the search which was carried out. No broader search than if the officers had a warrant would be permitted. The only issue is whether a search warrant was required as a precondition to that search. It is agreed that such a warrant would be required absent exigent circumstances.15 I would hold that the fact of arrest supplies such an exigent circumstance, since the police had lawfully gained entry to the premises to effect the arrest and since delaying the search to secure a warrant would have involved the risk of not recovering the fruits of the crime.

The majority today proscribes searches for which there is probable cause and which may prove fruitless unless carried out immediately. This rule will have no added effect whatsoever in protecting the rights of the criminal accused at trial against introduction of evidence seized without probable cause. Such evidence could not be introduced under the old rule. Nor does the majority *782today give any added protection to the right of privacy of those whose houses there is probable cause to search. A warrant would still be sworn out for those houses, and the privacy of their owners invaded. The only possible justification for the majority’s rule is that in some instances arresting officers may search when they have no probable cause to do so and that such unlawful searches might be prevented if the officers first sought a warrant from a magistrate. Against the possible protection of privacy in that class of cases, in which the privacy of the house has already been invaded by entry to make the arrest — an entry for which the majority does not assert that any warrant is necessary — must be weighed the risk of destruction of evidence for which there is probable cause to search, as a result of delays in obtaining a search warrant. Without more basis for radical change than the Court’s opinion reveals, I would not upset the balance of these interests which has been struck by the former decisions of this Court.

In considering searches incident to arrest, it must be remembered that there will be immediate opportunity to challenge the probable cause for the search in an adversary proceeding. The suspect has been apprised of the search by his very presence at the scene, and having been arrested, he will soon be brought into contact with people who can explain his rights. As Mr. Justice Brennan noted in a dissenting opinion, joined by The Chief Justice and Justices Black and Douglas, in Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217, 249-250 (1960), a search contemporaneous with a warrantless arrest is specially safeguarded since “[s]uch an arrest may constitutionally be made only upon probable cause, the existence of which is subject to judicial examination, see Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98, 100; and such an arrest demands the prompt bringing of the person arrested before a judicial officer, where the existence of *783probable cause is to be inquired into. Fed. Rules Crim. Proc. 5 (a) and (c). . . . Mallory v. United States, 354 U. S. 449; McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332.” And since that time the Court has imposed on state and federal officers alike the duty to warn suspects taken into custody, before questioning them, of their right to a lawyer. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966); Orozco v. Texas, 394 U. S. 324 (1969).

An arrested man, by definition conscious of the police interest in him, and provided almost immediately with a lawyer and a judge, is in an excellent position to dispute the reasonableness of his arrest and contemporaneous search in a full adversary proceeding. I would uphold the constitutionality of this search contemporaneous with an arrest since there were probable cause both for the search and for the arrest, exigent circumstances involving the removal or destruction of evidence, and satisfactory opportunity to dispute the issues of probable cause shortly thereafter. In this case, the search was reasonable.

Mr. Justice Stewart

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The appellant, Donald Vale, was convicted in a Louisiana court on a charge of possessing heroin and was sentenced as a multiple offender to 15 years’ imprisonment at hard labor. The Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, rejecting the claim that evidence introduced at the trial was the product of an unlawful search and seizure. 252 La. 1056, 215 So. 2d 811. We granted Vale’s motion to proceed in forma pauperis, postponed consideration of the question of jurisdiction to the hearing of the case on the merits, and limited review to the search-and-seizure question. 396 U. S. 813.*

The evidence adduced at the pretrial hearing on a motion to suppress showed that on April 24, 1967, officers possessing two warrants for Vale’s arrest and having information that he was residing at a specified address proceeded there in an unmarked car and set up a surveillance of the house. The evidence of what then took *32place was summarized by the Louisiana Supreme Court as follows:

“After approximately 15 minutes the officers observed a green 1958 Chevrolet drive up and sound the horn and after backing into a parking place, again blew the horn. At this juncture Donald Vale, who was well known to Officer Brady having arrested him twice in the previous month, was seen coming out of the house and walk up to the passenger side of the Chevrolet where he had a close brief conversation with the driver; and after looking up and down the street returned inside of the house. Within a few minutes he reappeared on the porch, and again cautiously looked up and down the street before proceeding to the passenger side of the Chevrolet, leaning through the window. From this the officers were convinced a narcotics sale had taken place. They returned to their car and immediately drove toward Donald Vale, and as they reached within approximately three cars lengths from the accused, (Donald Vale) he looked up and, obviously recognizing the officers, turned around, walking quickly toward the house. At the same time the driver of the Chevrolet started to make his get away when the car was blocked by the police vehicle. The three officers promptly alighted from the car, whereupon Officers Soule and Laumann called to Donald Vale to stop as he reached the front steps of the house, telling him he was under arrest. Officer Brady at the same time, seeing the driver of the Chevrolet, Arizzio Saucier, whom the officers knew to be a narcotic addict, place something hurriedly in his mouth, immediately placed him under arrest and joined his co-officers. Because of the trans*33action they had just observed they, informed Donald Yale they were going to search the house, and thereupon advised him of his constitutional rights. After they all entered the front room, Officer Laumann made a cursory inspection of the house to ascertain if anyone else was present and within about three minutes Mrs. Vale and James Yale, mother and brother of Donald Vale, returned home carrying groceries and were informed of the arrest and impending search.” 252 La., at 1067-1068, 215 So. 2d, at 815. (Footnote omitted.)

The search of a rear bedroom revealed a quantity of narcotics.

The Louisiana Supreme Court held that the search of the house did not violate the Fourth Amendment because it occurred “in the immediate vicinity of the arrest” of Donald Vale and was “substantially contemporaneous therewith . . . .” 252 La., at 1070, 215 So. 2d, at 816. We cannot agree. Last Term in Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, we held that when the search of a dwelling is sought to be justified as incident to a lawful arrest, it must constitutionally be confined to the area within the arrestee’s reach at the time of his arrest — “the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” 395 U. S., at 763. But even if Chimel is not accorded retroactive effect — a question on which we do not now express an opinion — no precedent of this Court can sustain the constitutional validity of the search in the case before us.

A search may be incident to an arrest “ ‘only if it is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest.’ ” Shipley v. California, 395 U. S. 818, 819; Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483, 486. If a search of a house is to be upheld *34as incident to an arrest, that arrest must take place inside the house, cf. Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 32, not somewhere outside — whether two blocks away, James v. Louisiana, 382 U. S. 36, twenty feet away, Ship-ley v. California, supra, or on the sidewalk near the front steps. “Belief, however well founded, that an article sought is concealed in a dwelling house furnishes no justification for a search of that place without a warrant.” Agnello v. United States, supra, at 33. That basic rule “has never been questioned in this Court.” Stoner v. California, supra, at 487 n. 5.

The Louisiana Supreme Court thought the search independently supportable because it involved narcotics, which are easily removed, hidden, or destroyed. It would be unreasonable, the Louisiana court concluded, “to require the officers under the facts of the case to first secure a search warrant before searching the premises, as timé is of the essence inasmuch as the officers never know whether there is anyone on the premises to be searched who could very easily destroy the evidence.” 252 La., at 1070, 215 So. 2d, at 816. Such a rationale could not apply to the present case, since by their own account the arresting officers satisfied themselves that no one else was in the house when they first entered the premises. But entirely apart from that point, our past decisions make clear that only in “a few specifically established and well-delineated” situations, Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357, may a warrantless search of a dwelling withstand constitutional scrutiny, even though the authorities have probable cause to conduct it. The burden rests on the State to show the existence of such an exceptional situation. Chimel v. California, supra, at 762; United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48, 51; McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 456. And the record before us discloses none.

*35There is no suggestion that anyone consented to the search. Cf. Zap v. United States, 328 U. S. 624, 628. The officers were not responding to an emergency. United States v. Jeffers, supra, at 52; McDonald v. United States, supra, at 454. They were not in hot pursuit of a fleeing felon. Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 298-299; Chapman v. United States, 365 U. S. 610, 615; Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 15. The goods ultimately seized were not in the process of destruction. Schmerher v. California, 384 U. S. 757, 770-771; United States v. Jeffers, supra; McDonald v. United States, supra, at 455. Nor were they about to be removed from the jurisdiction. Chapman v. United States, supra; Johnson v. United States, supra; United States v. Jeffers, supra.

The officers were able to procure two warrants for Yale’s arrest. They also had information that he was residing at the address where they found him. There is thus no reason, so far as anything before us appears, to suppose that it was impracticable for them to obtain a search warrant as well. Cf. McDonald v. United States, supra, at 454-455; Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699, 705-706; Johnson v. United States, supra; Taylor v. United States, 286 U. S. 1, 6; Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344, 358; Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 156; cf. Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 42 (opinion of Clark, J.). We decline to hold that an arrest on the street can provide its own “exigent circumstance” so as to justify a warrantless search of the arrestee’s house.

The Louisiana courts committed constitutional error in admitting into evidence the fruits of the illegal search. Shipley v. California, supra, at 819; James v. Louisiana, supra, at 37; Ker v. California, supra, at 30-34; Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643. Accordingly, the judgment is *36reversed and the case is remanded to the Louisiana Supreme Court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

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

Mr. Justice Black,

with whom The Chief Justice joins,

dissenting.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits only “unreasonable searches.”* A warrant has never been thought to be an absolute requirement for a constitutionally proper search. Searches, whether with or without a warrant, are to be judged by whether they are reasonable, and, as I said, speaking for the Court in Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 366-367 (1964), common sense dictates that reasonableness varies with the circumstances of the search. See, e. g., Henry v. United States, 361 U. S. 98 (1959); Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160 (1949). The Louisiana Supreme Court held not only that the police action here was reasonable but also that failure to conduct an immediate search would have been unreasonable. 252 La. 1056, 1070, 215 So. 2d 811, 816. With that view I am in complete agreement, for the following reasons.

The police, having warrants for Yale’s arrest, were watching his mother’s house from a short distance away. Not long after they began their vigil a car arrived, *37sounded its horn, and backed into a parking space near the house. The driver did not get out, but instead honked the car horn again. Yale, who had been arrested twice the month before and against whom an indictment for a narcotics offense was then pending, came out of his mother’s house and talked to the driver of the car. At the conclusion of the conversation Vale looked both ways, up and down the street, and then went back inside the house. When he reappeared he stopped before going to the car and stood, as one of the officers testified, “[l]ooking back and forth like to see who might be coming or who was in the neighborhood.” He then walked to the car and leaned in.

From this behavior the officers were convinced that a narcotics transaction was taking place at that very moment. They drove down the street toward Yale and the parked car. When they came within a few car lengths of the two men Vale saw them and began to walk quickly back toward the house. At the same time the driver of the car attempted to pull away. The police brought both parties to the transaction to a stop. They then saw that the driver of the car was one Saucier, a known narcotics addict. He hurriedly placed something in his mouth, and apparently swallowed it. The police placed both Vale and Saucier under arrest.

At this point the police had probable cause to believe that Vale was engaged in a narcotics transfer, and that a supply of narcotics would be found in the house, to which Vale had returned after his first conversation, from which he had emerged furtively bearing what the police could readily deduce was a supply of narcotics, and toward which he hurried after seeing the police. But the police did not know then who else might be in the house. Vale’s arrest took place near the house, and anyone observing from inside would surely have been alerted to destroy the stocks of contraband which *38the police believed Vale had left there. The police had already seen Saucier, the narcotics addict, apparently swallow what Yale had given him. Believing that some evidence had already been destroyed and that other evidence might well be, the police were faced with the choice of risking the immediate destruction of evidence or entering the house and conducting a search. I cannot say that their decision to search was unreasonable. Delay in order to obtain a warrant would have given an accomplice just the time he needed.

That the arresting officers did, in fact, believe that others might be in the house is attested to by their actions upon entering the door left open by Vale. The police at once checked the small house to determine if anyone else was present. Just as they discovered the house was empty, however, Yale’s mother and brother arrived. Now what had been a suspicion became a certainty: Vale’s relatives were in possession and knew of his arrest. To have abandoned the search at this point, and left the house with Vale, would not have been the action of reasonable police officers. As Mr. Justice White said, dissenting in Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, 775 (1969):

“For the police to search the house while the evidence they had probable cause to search out and seize was still there cannot be considered unreasonable.”

In my view, whether a search incident to a lawful arrest is reasonable should still be determined by the facts and circumstances of each case. Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 34-36 (1963); United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 63-64 (1950). For the reasons given above I am convinced that the search here was reasonable, even though Vale had not yet crossed the threshold of the house toward which he was headed.

*39Moreover, the circumstances here were sufficiently exceptional to justify a search, even if the search was not strictly “incidental” to an arrest. The Court recognizes that searches to prevent the destruction or removal of evidence have long been held reasonable by this Court. Preston v. United States, supra; McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 455 (1948); Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925). Whether the “exceptional circumstances” justifying such a search exist or not is a question that may be, as it is here, quite distinct from whether or not the search was incident to a valid arrest. See United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48, 51 (1951); Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10 (1948). It is thus unnecessary to determine whether the search was valid as incident to the arrest under either Chimel v. California, supra, or under the pre-Chimel standard as interpreted in Shipley v. California, 395 U. S. 818 (1969). It is only necessary to find that, given Yale’s arrest in a spot readily visible to anyone in the house and the probable existence of narcotics inside, it was reasonable for the police to conduct an immediate search of the premises.

The Court, however, finds the search here unreasonable. First, the Court suggests that the contraband was not “in the process of destruction.” None of the cases cited by the Court supports the proposition that “exceptional circumstances” exist only when the process of destruction has already begun. On the contrary we implied that those circumstances did exist when “evidence or contraband was threatened with removal or destruction.” Johnson v. United States, supra, at 15 (emphasis added). See also Chapman v. United States, 365 U. S. 610, 615 (1961); Hernandez v. United States, 353 F. 2d 624 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 384 U. S. 1008 (1966).

*40Second, the Court seems to argue that the search was unreasonable because the police officers had time to obtain a warrant. I agree that the opportunity to obtain a warrant is one of the factors to be weighed in determining reasonableness. Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699 (1948); United States v. Rabinowitz, supra, at 66 (Black, J., dissenting). But the record conclusively shows that there was no such opportunity here. As I noted above, once the officers had observed Yale’s conduct in front of the house they had probable cause to believe that a felony had been committed and that immediate action was necessary. At no time after the events in front of Mrs. Yale’s house would it have been prudent for the officers to leave the house in order to secure a warrant.

The Court asserts, however, that because the police obtained two warrants for Vale’s arrest there is “no reason ... to suppose that it was impracticable for them to obtain a search warrant as well.” The difficulty is that the two arrest warrants on which the Court seems to rely so heavily were not issued because of any present misconduct of Vale’s; they were issued because the bond had been increased for an earlier narcotics charge then pending against Vale. When the police came to arrest Vale, they knew only that his bond had been increased. There is nothing in the record to indicate that, absent the increased bond, there would have been probable cause for an arrest, much less a search. Probable cause for the search arose for the first time when the police observed the activity of Vale and Saucier in and around the house.

I do not suggest that all arrests necessarily provide the basis for a search of the arrestee’s house. In this case there is far more than a mere street arrest. The police also observed Vale’s use of the house as a base of operations for his commercial business, his attempt to *41return hurriedly to the house on seeing the officers, and the apparent destruction of evidence by the man with whom Vale was dealing. Furthermore the police arrival and Vale’s arrest were plainly visible to anyone within the house, and the police had every reason to believe that someone in the house was likely to destroy the contraband if the search were postponed.

This case raises most graphically the question how does a policeman protect evidence necessary to the State if he must leave the premises to get a warrant, allowing the evidence he seeks to be destroyed. The Court’s answer to that question makes unnecessarily difficult the conviction of those who prey upon society.

Mr. Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Respondent Robinson was convicted in United States District Court for the District of Columbia of the possession and facilitation of concealment of heroin in violation of 26 U. S. C. § 4704 (a) (1964 ed.), and 21 U. S. C. § 174 (1964 ed.). He was sentenced to concurrent terms of imprisonment for these offenses. On his appeal to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Cir*220cuit, that court first remanded the case to the District Court for an evidentiary hearing concerning the scope of the search of respondent’s person which had occurred at the time of his arrest. 145 U. S. App. D. C. 46, 447 F. 2d 1215 (1971). The District Court made findings of fact and conclusions of law adverse to respondent, and he again appealed. This time the Court of Appeals en banc reversed the judgment of conviction, holding that the heroin introduced in evidence against respondent had been obtained as a result of a search which violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 153 U. S. App. D. C. 114, 471 F. 2d 1082 (1972). We granted certiorari, 410 U. S. 982 (1973), and set the case for argument together with Gustafson v. Florida, No. 71-1669, post, p. 260, also decided today.

On April 23, 1968, at approximately 11 p. m., Officer Richard Jenks, a 15-year veteran of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, observed the respondent driving a 1965 Cadillac near the intersection of 8th and C Streets, N. E., in the District of Columbia. Jenks, as a result of previous investigation following a check of respondent’s operator’s permit four days earlier, determined there was reason to believe that respondent was operating a motor vehicle after the revocation of his operator’s permit. This is an offense defined by statute in the District of Columbia which carries a mandatory minimum jail term, a mandatory minimum fine, or both. D. C. Code Ann. § 40-302 (d) (1967).

Jenks signaled respondent to stop the automobile, which respondent did, and all three of the occupants emerged from the car. At that point Jenks informed respondent that he was under arrest for “operating after revocation and obtaining a permit by misrepresentation.” It was assumed by the Court of Appeals, and is conceded by the respondent here, that Jenks had *221probable cause to arrest respondent, and that he effected a full-custody arrest.1

In accordance with procedures prescribed in police department instructions,2 Jenks then began to search *222respondent. He explained at a subsequent hearing that he was “face-to-face” with the respondent, and “placed [his] hands on [the respondent], my right-hand to his *223left breast like this (demonstrating) and proceeded to pat him down thus [with the right hand].” During this patdown, Jenks felt an object in the left breast pocket of the heavy coat respondent was wearing, but testified that he “couldn't tell what it was” and also that he “couldn’t actually tell the size of it.” Jenks then reached into the pocket and pulled out the object, which turned out to be a “crumpled up cigarette package.” Jenks testified that at this point he still did not know what was in the package:

“As I felt the package I could feel objects in the package but I couldn’t tell what they were. ... I knew they weren’t cigarettes.”

The officer then opened the cigarette pack and found 14 gelatin capsules of white powder which .he thought to be, and which later analysis proved to be, heroin. Jenks then continued his search of respondent to completion, feeling around his waist and trouser legs, and examining the remaining pockets. The heroin seized from the respondent was admitted into evidence at the trial which resulted in his conviction in the District Court.

The opinion for the plurality judges of the Court of Appeals, written by Judge Wright, the concurring opinion of Chief Judge Bazelon, and the dissenting opinion of Judge Wilkey, concurred in by three judges, gave careful and comprehensive treatment to the authority of a police officer to search the person of one *224who has been validly arrested and taken into custody. We conclude that the search conducted by Jenks in this case did not offend the limits imposed by the Fourth Amendment, and we therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

I

It is well settled that a search incident to a lawful arrest is a traditional exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. This general exception has historically been formulated into two distinct propositions. The first is that a search may be made of the person of the arrestee by virtue of the lawful arrest. The second is that a search may be made of the area within the control of the arrestee.

Examination of this Court’s decisions shows that these two propositions have been treated quite differently. The validity of the search of a person incident to a lawful arrest has been regarded as settled from its first enunciation, and has remained virtually unchallenged until the present case. The validity of the second proposition, while likewise conceded in principle, has been subject to differing interpretations as to the extent of the area which may be searched.

Because the rule requiring exclusion of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment was first enunciated in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914), it is understandable that virtually all of this Court’s search-and-seizure law has been developed since that time. In Weeks, the Court made clear its recognition of the validity of a search incident to a lawful arrest:

“What then is the present case? Before answering that inquiry specifically, it may be well by a process of exclusion to state what it is not. It is not an assertion of the right on the part of the *225Government, always recognized under English and American law, to search the person of the accused when legally arrested to discover and seize the fruits or evidences of crime. This right has been uniformly maintained in many cases. 1 Bishop on Criminal Procedure, §211; Wharton, Crim. Plead, and Practice, 8th ed., § 60; Dillon v. O’Brien and Davis, 16 Cox C. C. 245.” Id., at 392.

Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20 (1925), decided 11 years after Weeks, repeats the categorical recognition of the validity of a search incident to lawful arrest:

“The right without a search warrant contemporaneously to search persons lawfully arrested while committing crime and to search the place where the arrest is made in order to find and seize things connected with the crime as its fruits or as the means by which it was committed, as well as weapons and other things to effect an escape from custody, is not to be doubted.” Id., at 30.

Throughout the series of cases in which the Court has addressed the second proposition relating to a search incident to a lawful arrest — the permissible area beyond the person of the arrestee which such a search may cover — no doubt has been expressed as to the unqualified authority of the arresting authority to search the person of the arrestee. E. g., Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925); Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192 (1927); Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344 (1931); United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452 (1932); Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 145 (1947); Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699 (1948); United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56 (1950); Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364 (1964); Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969). In Chimel, where the Court overruled Rabinowitz and Harris as to the area *226of permissible search incident to a lawful arrest, full recognition was again given to the authority to search the person of the arrestee:

“When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer's safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction.” 395 U. S., at 762-763.

Three years after the decision in Chimel, supra, we upheld the validity of a search in which heroin had been taken from the person of the defendant after his arrest on a weapons charge, in Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143 (1972), saying:

“Under the circumstances surrounding Williams’ possession of the gun seized by Sgt. Connolly, the arrest on the weapons charge was supported by probable cause, and the search of his person and of the car incident to that arrest was lawful.” Id., at 149.

Last Term in Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U. S. 291, 295 (1973), we again reaffirmed the traditional statement of the authority to search incident to a valid arrest.

Thus the broadly stated rule, and the reasons for it, have been repeatedly affirmed in the decisions of this Court since Weeks v. United States, supra, nearly 60 years ago. Since the statements in the cases speak not simply in terms of an exception to the warrant requirement, but in terms of an affirmative authority to search, they clearly imply that such searches also meet the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness.

*227II

In its decision of this case, the Court of Appeals decided that even after a police officer lawfully places a suspect under arrest for the purpose of taking him into custody, he may not ordinarily proceed to fully search the prisoner. He must, instead, conduct a limited frisk of the outer clothing and remove such weapons that he may, as a result of that limited frisk, reasonably believe and ascertain that the suspect has in his possession. While recognizing that Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968), dealt with a permissible “frisk” incident to an investigative stop based on less than probable cause to arrest, the Court of Appeals felt that the principles of that case should be carried over to this probable-cause arrest for driving while one’s license is revoked. Since there would be no further evidence of such a crime to be obtained in a search of the arrestee, the court held that only a search for weapons could be justified.

Terry v. Ohio, supra, did not involve an arrest for probable cause, and it made quite clear that the “protective frisk” for weapons which it approved might be conducted without probable cause. Id., at 21-22, 24-25. This Court’s opinion explicitly recognized that there is a “distinction in purpose, character, and extent between a search incident to an arrest and a limited search for weapons.”

“The former, although justified in part by the acknowledged necessity to protect the arresting officer from assault with a concealed weapon, Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 367 (1964), is also justified on other grounds, ibid., and can therefore involve a relatively extensive exploration of the person. A search for weapons in the absence of probable cause to arrest, however, must, like any other search, be strictly circumscribed by the exigen*228cies which justify its initiation. Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 310 (1967) (Mr. Justice Fortas, concurring). Thus it must be limited to that which is necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby, and may realistically be characterized as something less than a ‘full’ search, even though it remains a serious intrusion.

"... An arrest is a wholly different kind of intrusion upon individual freedom from a limited search for weapons, and the interests each is designed to serve are likewise quite different. An arrest is the initial stage of a criminal prosecution. It is intended to vindicate society’s interest in having its laws obeyed, and it is inevitably accompanied by future interference with the individual’s freedom of movement, whether or not trial or conviction ultimately follows. The protective search for weapons, on the other hand, constitutes a brief, though far from inconsiderable, intrusion upon the sanctity of the person.” Id., at 25-26 (footnote omitted).

Terry, therefore, affords no basis to carry over to a probable-cause arrest the limitations this Court placed on a stop-and-frisk search permissible without probable cause.

The Court of Appeals also relied on language in Peters v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 66 (1968), a companion case to Terry. There the Court held that the police officer had authority to search Peters because he had probable cause to arrest him, and went on to say:

“[T]he incident search was obviously justified 'by the need to seize weapons and other things which might be used to assault an officer or effect an escape, as well as by the need to prevent the *229destruction of evidence of the crime.’ Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 367 (1964). Moreover, it was reasonably limited in scope by these purposes. Officer Lasky did not engage in an unrestrained and thorough-going examination of Peters and his personal effects.” Id., at 67.

It is, of course, possible to read the second sentence from this quotation as imposing a novel limitation on the established doctrine set forth in the first sentence. It is also possible to read it as did Mr. Justice Harlan in his opinion concurring in the result:

“The second possible source of confusion is the Court’s statement that 'Officer Lasky did not engage in an unrestrained and thorough-going examination of Peters and his personal effects.’ [392 U. S.], at 67. Since the Court found probable cause to arrest Peters, and since an officer arresting on probable cause is entitled to make a very full incident search, I assume that this is merely a factual observation. As a factual matter, I agree with it.” Id., at 77 (footnote omitted).

We do not believe that the Court in Peters intended in one unexplained and unelaborated sentence to impose a novel and far-reaching limitation on the authority to search the person of an arrestee incident to his lawful arrest. While the language from Peters was quoted with approval in Chimel v. California, 395 U. S., at 764, it is preceded by a full exposition of the traditional and unqualified authority of the arresting officer to search the arrestee’s person. Id., at 763. We do not believe that either Terry or Peters, when considered in the light of the previously discussed statements of this Court, justified the sort of limitation upon that authority which the Court of Appeals fashioned in this case.

*230Ill

Virtually all of the statements of this Court affirming the existence of an unqualified authority to search incident to a lawful arrest are dicta. We would not, therefore, be foreclosed by principles of stare decisis from further examination into history and practice in order to see- whether the sort of qualifications imposed by the Court of Appeals in this case were in fact intended by the Framers of the Fourth Amendment or recognized in cases decided prior to Weeks. Unfortunately such authorities as exist are sparse. Such common-law treatises as Blackstone’s Commentaries and Holmes’ Common Law are simply silent on the subject. Pollock and Maitland, in their History of English Law, describe the law of arrest as “rough and rude” before the time of Edward I, but do not address the authority to search incident to arrest. 2 F. Pollock & F. Maitland, The History of English Law 582 (2d ed. 1909).

The issue was apparently litigated in the English courts in Dillon v. O’Brien, 16 Cox C. C. 245 (Exch. Ireland, 1887), cited in Weeks v. United States, supra, There Baron Palles said:

“But the interest of the State in the person charged being brought to trial in due course necessarily extends, as well -to the preservation of material evidence of his guilt or innocence, as to his custody for the purpose of trial. His custody is of no value if the law is powerless to prevent the abstraction or destruction of this evidence, without which a trial would be no more than an empty form. But if there be a right to production or preservation of this evidence, I cannot see how it can be enforced otherwise than by capture.” 16 Cox C. C., at 250.

*231 Spalding v. Preston, 21 Vt. 9 (1848), represents an early holding in this country that evidence may be seized from one who is lawfully arrested. In Closson v. Morrison, 47 N. H. 482 (1867), the Court made the following statement:

“[W]e think that an officer would also be justified in taking from a person whom he had arrested for crime, any deadly weapon he might find upon him, such as a revolver, a dirk, a knife, a sword cane, a slung shot, or a club, though it had not been used or intended to be used in the commission of the offence for which the prisoner had been arrested, and even though no threats of violence towards the officer had been made. A due regard for his own safety on the part of the officer, and also for the public safety, would justify a sufficient search to ascertain if such weapons were carried about the person of the prisoner, or were in his possession, and if found, to seize and hold them until the prisoner should be discharged, or until they could be otherwise properly disposed of. Spalding v. Preston, 21 Vt. 9, 16.

“So we think it might be with money or other articles of value, found upon the prisoner, by means of which, if left in his possession, he might procure his escape, or obtain tools, or implements, or weapons with which to effect his escape. We think the officer arresting a man for crime, not only may, but frequently should, make such searches and seizures; that in many cases they might be reasonable and proper, and courts would hold him harmless for so doing, when he acts in good faith, and from a regard to his own or the public safety, or the security of his prisoner.” Id., at 484-485.

*232Similarly, in Holker v. Hennessey, 141 Mo. 527, 42 S. W. 1090 (1897), the Supreme Court of Missouri said:

"Generally speaking, in the absence of a statute, an officer has no right to take any property from the person of the prisoner except such as may afford evidence of the crime charged, or means'of identifying the criminal, or may be helpful in making an escape.” Id., at 539, 42 S. W., at 1093.

Then Associate Judge Cardozo of the New York Court of Appeals summarized his understanding of the historical basis for the authority to search incident to arrest in these words:

“The basic principle is this: Search of the person is unlawful when the seizure of the body is a trespass, and the purpose of the search is to discover grounds as yet unknown for arrest or accusation [citation omitted]. Search of the person becomes lawful when grounds for arrest and accusation have been discovered, and the law is in the act of subjecting the body of the accused to its physical dominion.

“The distinction may seem subtle, but in truth it is founded in shrewd appreciation of the necessities of government. We are not to strain an immunity to the point at which human nature rebels against honoring it in conduct. The peace officer empowered to arrest must be empowered to disarm. If he may disarm, he may search, lest a. weapon be concealed. The search being lawful, he retains what he finds if connected with the crime.” People v. Chiagles, 237 N. Y. 193, 197, 142 N. E. 583, 584 (1923).

While these earlier authorities are sketchy, they tend to support the broad statement of the authority to *233search incident to arrest found in the successive decisions of this Court, rather than the restrictive one which was applied by the Court of Appeals in this case. The scarcity of case law before Weeks is doubtless due in part to the fact that the exclusionary rule there enunciated had been first adopted only 11 years earlier in Iowa; but it would seem to be also due in part to the fact that the issue was regarded as well settled.3

The Court of Appeals in effect determined that the only reason supporting the authority for a full search incident to lawful arrest was the possibility of discovery of evidence or fruits.4 Concluding that there could be no evidence or fruits in the case of an offense such as that with which respondent was charged, it held that any protective search would have to be limited by the conditions laid down in Terry for a search upon less than probable cause to arrest. Quite apart from the fact that Terry clearly recognized the distinction between the two types of searches, and that a different rule governed one than governed the other, we find additional reason to disagree with the Court of Appeals.

*234The justification or reason for the authority to search incident to a lawful arrest rests quite as much on the need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody as it does on the need to preserve evidence on his person for later use at trial. Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20 (1925); Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217 (1960). The standards traditionally governing a search incident to lawful arrest are not, therefore, commuted to the stricter Terry standards by the absence of probable fruits or further evidence of the particular crime for which the arrest is made.

Nor are we inclined, on the basis of what seems to us to be a rather speculative judgment, to qualify the breadth of the general authority to search incident to a lawful custodial arrest on an assumption that persons arrested for the offense of driving while their licenses have been revoked are less likely to possess dangerous weapons than are those arrested for other crimes.5 It is scarcely open to doubt that the danger to an officer is far greater in the case of the extended exposure which *235follows the taking of a suspect into custody and transporting him to the police station than in the case of the relatively fleeting contact resulting from the typical Terry-type stop. This is an adequate basis for treating all custodial arrests alike for purposes of search justification.

But quite apart from these distinctions, our more fundamental disagreement with the Court of Appeals arises from its suggestion that there must be litigated in each case the issue of whether or not there was present one of the reasons supporting the authority for a search of the person incident to a lawful arrest. We do not think the long line of authorities of this Court dating back to Weeks, or what we can glean from the history of practice in this country and in England, requires such a case-by-case adjudication. A police officer's determination as to how and where to search the person of a suspect whom he has arrested is necessarily a quick ad hoc judgment which the Fourth Amendment does not require to be broken down in each instance into an analysis of each step in the search. The authority to search the person incident to a lawful custodial arrest, while based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence, does not depend on what a court may later decide was the probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found upon the person of the suspect. A custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification. It is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes the authority to search, and we hold that in the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a “reasonable” search under that Amendment.

*236IV

The search of respondent’s person conducted by Officer Jenks in this case and the seizure from him of the heroin, were permissible under established Fourth Amendment law. While thorough, the search partook of none of the extreme or patently abusive characteristics which were held to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165 (1952). Since it is the fact of custodial arrest which gives rise to the authority to search,6 it is of no moment that Jenks did not indicate any subjective fear of the respondent or that he did not himself suspect that respondent was armed.7 Having in the course of a lawful search come upon the crumpled package of cigarettes, he was entitled to inspect it; and when his inspection revealed the heroin capsules, he was entitled to seize them as “fruits, instrumentalities, or contraband” probative of criminal conduct. Harris v. United States, 331 U. S., at 154-155; Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 299, 307 (1967); Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S., at 149. *237The judgment of the Court of Appeals holding otherwise is

Reversed.

Mr. Justice Powell,

concurring.*

Although I join the opinions of the Court, I write briefly to emphasize what seems to me to be the essential premise of our decisions.

The Fourth Amendment safeguards the right of “the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures . . . These are areas of an individual’s life about which he entertains legitimate expectations of privacy. I believe that an individual lawfully subjected to a custodial arrest retains no significant Fourth Amendment interest in the privacy of his person. Under this view the custodial arrest is the significant intrusion of state power into the privacy of one’s person. If the arrest is lawful, the privacy interest guarded by the Fourth Amendment is subordinated to a legitimate and overriding governmental concern. No reason then exists to frustrate law enforcement by requiring some independent justification for a search incident to a lawful custodial arrest. This seems to me the reason that a valid arrest justifies a full search of the person, even if that search is not narrowly limited by the twin rationales of seizing evidence and disarming the arrestee.1 The search incident to arrest *238is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment because the privacy interest protected by that constitutional guarantee is legitimately abated by the fact of arrest.2

Mr. Justice Marshall,

with whom Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Brennan join, dissenting.

Certain fundamental principles have characterized this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence over the years. Perhaps the most basic of these was expressed by Mr. Justice Butler, speaking for a unanimous Court in Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344 (1931): “There is no formula for the determination of reasonableness. Each case is to be decided on its own facts and circumstances.” Id., at 357. As we recently held: “The constitutional validity of a warrantless search is preeminently the sort of question which can only be decided in the concrete factual context of the individual case.” Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 59 (1968). And the intensive, at times painstaking, case-by-case analysis characteristic of our Fourth Amendment decisions bespeaks our “jealous regard for maintaining the integrity of individual rights.” Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 647 *239(1961). See also Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 393 (1914).

In the present case, however, the majority turns its back on these principles, holding that “the fact of the lawful arrest” always establishes the authority to conduct a full search of the arrestee’s person, regardless of whether in a particular case “there was present one of the reasons supporting the authority for a search of the person incident to a lawful arrest.” Ante, at 235. The majority’s approach represents a clear and marked departure from our long tradition of case-by-case adjudication of the reasonableness of searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment. I continue to believe that “[t]he scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the particular circumstances.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21 (1968). Because I find the majority’s reasoning to be at odds with these fundamental principles, I must respectfully dissent.

I

On April 19, 1968, Officer Richard Jenks stopped a 1965 Cadillac driven by respondent at the intersection of 9th and U Streets, N. W., in the District of Columbia, for what was called a “routine spot check.” At that time, Officer Jenks examined respondent’s temporary operator’s permit, automobile registration card, and Selective Service classification card. Although he permitted respondent to go on his way, Officer Jenks pursued a discrepancy he had noted between the “1938” date of birth given on the operator’s permit and the “1927” date of birth given on the Selective Service card. A check of police traffic records showed that an operator’s *240permit issued to one Willie Robinson, Jr., born in 1927, had been revoked, and that a temporary operator’s permit had subsequently been issued to one Willie Robinson, born in 1938. The pictures on the revoked permit and on the application for the temporary permit were of the same man — the person stopped by Jenks for the routine check on April 19. Having investigated the matter himself in this fashion, it is clear that Officer Jenks had probable cause to believe that respondent had violated a provision of the District of Columbia Motor Vehicle Code making it unlawful for any person to operate a motor vehicle in the District during the period for which his operator’s permit is revoked. D. C. Code Ann. § 40-302 (d) (1967).

Four days later, on April 23, 1968, while on duty in their patrol car, Officer Jenks and his partner saw respondent driving the same vehicle. They pulled up behind respondent’s car and signaled it to stop. From all indications in the record, respondent immediately complied and brought his car to a stop alongside the curb, the officers parking their patrol car immediately behind his.

Respondent got out of his car and walked back toward the patrol car. Both Officer Jenks and his partner got out of the patrol car and started toward respondent’s car. Officer Jenks asked respondent for his permit and registration card and, when shown the same permit respondent had given him four days earlier, informed respondent that he was under arrest for operating a motor vehicle after revocation of his operator’s permit.

Jenks then began to search respondent. His normal procedure in conducting a search of an arrestee would be to “have him spread-eagle over a wall or something of that nature.” But in Jenks’ own words, “I think almost every search is different. It depends on the man’s size and the nature of the crime.” Since he had a substantial *241height and weight advantage over respondent, and because the arrest was only for a traffic offense, Jenks chose instead to conduct the search face to face, in contrast to his normal practice.

The first step in the search was for Jenks to place both his hands on respondent's chest and begin to pat him down. During this patdown, Jenks felt something in the left breast pocket of respondent's heavy overcoat. Jenks later testified that he could not immediately tell what was in the pocket. The record does indicate, however, that the object did not feel like a gun and that Jenks had no particular indication it was a weapon of any kind.1 Nonetheless, he reached into the pocket and took the object out. It turned out to be a crumpled-up cigarette package.

With the package now in his hands, Jenks could feel objects inside but could not tell what they were. It does not appear that Jenks had any reason to believe, or did in fact believe, that the objects were weapons of any sort. He nevertheless opened up the package and looked inside, thereby finding the gelatin capsules of heroin which were introduced against respondent at his trial for the possession and facilitation of concealment of heroin.

H-i HH

Mr. Justice Jackson, writing for the Court in Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 13-14 (1948), explained:

“The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies *242law 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. . . . 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 or government enforcement agent.”

See also Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 449 (1971). The majority’s fear of overruling the “quick ad hoc judgment” of the police officer is thus inconsistent with the very function of the Amendment — to ensure that the quick ad hoc judgments of police officers are subject to review and control by the judiciary.

In the vast majority of cases, the determination of when the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is required to be made by a neutral judicial officer before the search is conducted. See Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 356-357 (1967); Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 33 (1925). The Constitution requires that “the deliberate, impartial judgment of a judicial officer ... be interposed between the citizen and the police . . . .” Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 481-482 (1963).

The requirement that the police seek prior approval of a search from a judicial officer is, no doubt, subject to “a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions,” Katz v. United States, supra, at 357; including searches of a moving vehicle, Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925); searches in certain exigent circumstances, Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 298-299 (1967); McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 454-455 (1948); and searches incident to a lawful *243arrest, Agnello v. United States, supra; Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969). But because an exception is invoked to justify a search without a warrant does not preclude further judicial inquiry into the reasonableness of that search. It is the role of the judiciary, not of police officers, to delimit the scope of exceptions to the warrant requirement. “[T]he general requirement that a search warrant be obtained is not lightly to be dispensed with, and 'the burden is on those seeking [an] exemption [from the requirement] to show the need for it . . . ” Id., at 762, quoting United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48, 51 (1951). Exceptions to the warrant requirement are not talismans precluding further judicial inquiry whenever they are invoked, see Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, at 461, but rather are “jealously and carefully drawn.” Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493, 499 (1958).

Carrying out our mandate of delineating the proper scope of the search-incident-to-arrest exception requires consideration of the purposes of that exception as they apply to the particular search that occurred in this case. See Chimel v. California, supra, at 762-763; Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 367 (1964). Yet the majority, rather than focusing on the facts of this case, places great emphasis on the police department order which instructed Officer Jenks to conduct a full search and to examine carefully everything he found whenever making an in-custody arrest. See ante, at 221 and n. 2. But this mode of analysis was explicitly re'jected in Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40 (1968). There both the defendant and the State urged that the principal issue before us was the constitutionality of a state statute which authorized the search there in question. We declined, however, to engage in what we viewed “as the abstract and unproductive exercise” of laying the words of the statute next to the Fourth Amendment “in an effort to determine whether the two are in some *244sense compatible.” Id., at 59. “Our constitutional inquiry,” we concluded, “would not be furthered here by an attempt to pronounce judgment on the words of the statute. We must confine our review instead to the reasonableness of the searches and seizures which underlie these two convictions.” Id., at 62.

The majority also suggests that the Court of Appeals reached a novel and unprecedented result by imposing qualifications on the historically recognized authority to conduct a full search incident to a lawful arrest. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the Court of Appeals itself was so careful to point out.

One need not go back to Blackstone’s Commentaries, Holmes’ Common Law, or Pollock & Maitland in search of precedent for the approach adopted by the Court of Appeals. Indeed, given the fact that mass production of the automobile did not begin until the early decades of the present century, I find it somewhat puzzling that the majority even looks to these sources for guidance on the only question presented in this case: the permissible scope of a search of the person incident to a lawful arrest for violation of a motor vehicle regulation. The fact is that this question has been considered by several state and federal courts, the vast majority of which have held that, absent special circumstances, a police officer has no right to conduct a full search of the person incident to a lawful arrest for violation of a motor vehicle regulation.

In Barnes v. State, 25 Wis. 2d 116, 130 N. W. 2d 264 (1964), for example, police officers stopped a car for a brake-light violation. Rather than simply issue a citation, the officers placed the driver under arrest. A full search of the driver’s person was then conducted, including shining a flashlight into his overcoat pocket, disclosing a small quantity of marihuana and a package of cigarette papers. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin held *245the search of the driver’s pocket unreasonable. While expressly holding that where a traffic offender is actually arrested, as distinguished from being given a summons, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search his person for weapons, nevertheless the court held it unreasonable to look inside the driver’s overcoat pocket with a flashlight. “We cannot conceive,” the court said, “that this aspect of the search was a legitimate search for weapons. . . . We reject the state’s contention that any search of the person of one lawfully arrested is a valid search.” Id., at 126, 130 N. W. 2d, at 269.

In State v. Curtis, 290 Minn. 429, 190 N. W. 2d 631 (1971), police officers stopped a car which had defective taillights and which had made an illegal right turn. The officers decided to take the driver down to the station house and searched him for weapons before putting him in the squad car. One of the officers felt the outside of the driver’s pockets. As in Robinson’s case, the officer “detected some object but couldn’t tell what it was. It did not feel like a gun or knife.” Id., at 430, 190 N. W. 2d, at 632. “Neither officer expressed any concern for his personal safety. There was no testimony that they suspected defendant of any other criminal activity or were aware of any dangerous propensities on his part.” Id., at 431, 190 N. W. 2d, at 633. Nevertheless the officer reached into the pocket, resulting in the discovery of a package of marihuana. The Minnesota Supreme Court held the search unlawful. While recognizing the “concern for the injuries and loss of life experienced by police officers in face-to-face confrontations with traffic offenders,” the court held that “the validity of a search for weapons following a traffic arrest depends on whether the officer had reasonable grounds to believe a search was necessary for his own safety or to prevent an escape.” Id., at 436-437, 190 N. W. 2d, at 636, citing Shelton *246v. State, 3 Md. App. 394, 399, 239 A. 2d 610, 613 (1968).

Of like import is the decision of the Oregon Supreme Court in State v. O’Neal, 251 Ore. 163, 444 P. 2d 951 (1968) (en banc). Here defendant’s automobile was stopped because it had no rear license plate. When asked to produce an operator’s license, the defendant produced a temporary operator’s license issued to another person which had expired several years earlier. The officers then arrested defendant and placed him in the back seat of the police car. “One of the officers got in the police car and asked the defendant to remove his money from his wallet and give his wallet to the officer. The defendant did so and the officer took papers from the wallet and examined them. When the officer unfolded one piece of paper a half-smoked marijuana cigarette fell out.” Id., at 164-165, 444 P. 2d, at 952. The court held the search unlawful. Again, while recognizing the officer’s right to conduct a search incident to arrest in order to protect the officer and deprive the prisoner of potential means of escape, the court held:

“The search of the wallet obviously had nothing to do with the officers’ safety. The defendant testified that the officers 'patted him down’ before placing him in the police car. The officers did not remember whether they had or had not. In any event, it is difficult to see how defendant’s wallet could have reasonably been believed to have contained a weapon.” Id., at 166, 444 P. 2d, at 953.

See also People v. Marsh, 20 N. Y. 2d 98, 228 N. E. 2d 783 (1967); People v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 7 Cal. 3d 186, 496 P. 2d 1205 (1972); State v. Quintana, 92 Ariz. 267, 376 P. 2d 130 (1962) (en banc); People v. Zeigler, 358 Mich. 355, 100 N. W. 2d 456 (1960). The Tenth Circuit has likewise stated that it is “in complete agreement with the prevailing federal and state authority *247which condemns the search of persons and automobiles following routine traffic violations.” United States v. Humphrey, 409 F. 2d 1055, 1058 (1969). See also Amador-Gonzalez v. United States, 391 F. 2d 308, 315 (CA5 1968) (Wisdom, J.).

Accordingly, I think it disingenuous for the Court to now pronounce that what precedents exist on the question “tend to support the broad statement of the authority to search incident to arrest found in the successive decisions of this Court, rather than the restrictive one which was applied by the Court of Appeals in this case.” 2 Ante, at 232-233. It is disquieting, to say the least, to see the Court at once admit that “[virtually all of the statements of this Court affirming the existence of an unqualified authority to search incident to a lawful arrest are dicta” and concede that we are presented with an open question on which “further examination into history and practice” would be helpful, yet then conduct an examina*248tion into prior practice which is not only wholly superficial, but totally inaccurate and misleading.

The majority’s attempt to avoid case-by-case adjudication of Fourth Amendment issues is not only misguided as a matter of principle, but is also doomed to fail as a matter of practical application. As the majority itself is well aware, see ante, at 221 n. 1, the powers granted the police in this case are strong ones, subject to potential abuse. Although, in this particular case, Officer Jenks was required by police department regulations to make an in-custody arrest rather than to issue a citation, in most jurisdictions and for most traffic offenses the determination of whether to issue a citation or effect a full arrest is discretionary with the officer. There is always the possibility that a police officer, lacking probable cause to obtain a search warrant, will use a traffic arrest as a pretext to conduct a search. See, e. g., Amador-Gonzalez v. United States, supra. I suggest this possibility not to impugn the integrity of our police, but merely to point out that case-by-case adjudication will always be necessary to determine whether a full arrest was effected for purely legitimate reasons or, rather, as a pretext for searching the arrestee. “An arrest may not be used as a pretext to search for evidence.” United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452, 467 (1932). See also Jones v. United States, 357 U. S., at 500; Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217, 226 and 230 (1960); United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 82 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). Cf. Chimel v. California, 395 U. S., at 767-768.

Ill

The majority states that “[a] police officer’s determination as to how and where to search the person of a suspect whom he has arrested is' necessarily a quick ad hoc judgment which the Fourth Amendment does not *249require to be broken down in each instance into an analysis of each step in the search.” 3 Ante, at 235. No precedent is cited for this broad assertion — not surprisingly, since there is none. Indeed, we only recently rejected such “a rigid all-or-nothing model of justification and regulation under the Amendment, [for] it obscures the utility of limitations upon the scope, as well as the initiation, of police action as a means of constitutional regulation. This Court has held in the past that a search which is reasonable at its inception may violate the Fourth Amendment by virtue of its intolerable intensity and scope.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S., at 17-18. As we there concluded, “in determining whether the seizure and search were 'unreasonable’ our inquiry is a dual one — whether the officer’s action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” Id., at 19-20.

As I view the matter, the search in this case divides into three distinct phases: the patdown of respondent’s coat pocket; the removal of the unknown object from the *250pocket; and the opening of the crumpled-up cigarette package.

A

No question is raised here concerning the lawfulness of the patdown of respondent’s coat pocket. The Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the right of a police officer to conduct a limited frisk for weapons when making an in-custody arrest, regardless of the nature of the crime for which the arrest was made. As it said:

“[I]t would seem clearly unreasonable to expect a police officer to place a suspect in his squad car for transportation to the stationhouse without first taking reasonable measures to insure that the suspect is unarmed. We therefore conclude that whenever a police officer, acting within the bounds of his authority, makes an in-custody arrest, he may also conduct a limited frisk of the suspect’s outer clothing in order to remove any weapons the suspect may have in his possession.” 153 U. S. App. D. C. 114, 130, 471 F. 2d 1082, 1098 (1972) (footnote omitted; emphasis in original).

B

With respect to the removal of the unknown object from the coat pocket, the first issue presented is whether that aspect of the search can be sustained as part of the limited frisk for weapons. The weapons search approved by the Court of Appeals was modeled upon the narrowly drawn protective search for weapons authorized in Terry, which consists “of a limited patting of the outer clothing of the suspect for concealed objects which might be used as instruments of assault.” See Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S., at 65. See also Terry, supra, at 30.

It appears to have been conceded by the Government below that the removal of the object from respondent’s coat pocket exceeded the scope of a Terry frisk for *251weapons, since, under Terry, an officer may not remove an object from the suspect’s pockets unless he has reason to believe it to be a dangerous weapon. 153 U. S. App. D. C., at 121 and n. 9, 471 F. 2d, at 1089 and n. 9, citing ALI Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure § 110.2 (4) (Proposed Official Draft No. 1, 1972). Cf. Sibron v. New York, supra, at 65.4

In the present case, however, Officer Jenks had no reason to believe and did not in fact believe that the object in respondent’s coat pocket was a weapon. He admitted later that the object did not feel like a gun. See n. 1, supra. In fact, he did not really have any thoughts one way or another about what was in the pocket. As Jenks himself testified, “I just searched him. I didn’t think about what I was looking for. I just searched him.” Since the removal of the object from the pocket cannot be justified as part of a limited Terry weapons frisk, the question arises whether it is reasonable for a police officer, when effecting an in-custody arrest of a traffic offender, to make a fuller search of the person than is permitted pursuant to Terry.

The underlying rationale of a search incident to arrest of a traffic offender initially suggests as reasonable a search whose scope is similar to the protective weapons frisk permitted in Terry. A search incident to arrest, as the majority indicates, has two basic functions: the removal of weapons the arrestee might use to resist arrest or effect an escape, and the seizure of evidence or fruits of the crime for which the arrest is made, so as to prevent their concealment or destruction. See ante, at 234; Chimel v. California, 395 U. S., at 763.

*252The Government does not now contend that the search of respondent's pocket can be justified by any need to find and seize evidence in order to prevent its concealment or destruction, for, as the Court of Appeals found, there is no evidence or fruits of the offense with which respondent was charged. The only rationale for a search in this case, then, is the removal of weapons which the arrestee might use to harm the officer and attempt an escape. This rationale, of course, is identical to the rationale of the search permitted in Terry. As we said there, “The sole justification of the search in the present situation is the protection of the police officer and others nearby, and it must therefore be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police officer.” Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 29. Since the underlying rationale of a Terry search and the search of a traffic violator are identical, the Court of Appeals held that the scope of the searches must be the same. And in view of its conclusion that the removal of the object from respondent’s coat pocket exceeded the scope of a lawful Terry frisk, a conclusion not disputed by the Government or challenged by the majority here, the plurality of the Court of Appeals held that the removal of the package exceeded the scope of a lawful search incident to arrest of a traffic violator.

The problem with this approach, however, is that it ignores several significant differences between the context in which a search incident to arrest for a traffic violation is made, and the situation presented in Terry. Some of these differences would appear to suggest permitting a more thorough search in this case than was permitted in Terry; other differences suggest a narrower, more limited right to search than was there recognized.

The most obvious difference between the two contexts relates to whether the officer has cause to believe that *253the individual he is dealing with possesses weapons which might be used against him. Terry did not permit an officer to conduct a weapons frisk of anyone he lawfully stopped on the street, but rather, only where “he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual . . . 392 U. S., at 27. While the policeman who arrests a suspected rapist or robber may well have reason to believe he is dealing with an armed and dangerous person, certainly this does not hold true with equal force with respect to a person arrested for a motor vehicle violation of the sort involved in this case.

Nor was there any particular reason in this case to believe that respondent was dangerous. He had not attempted to evade arrest, but had quickly complied with the police both in bringing his car to a stop after being signaled to do so and in producing the documents Officer Jenks requested. In fact, Jenks admitted that he searched respondent face to face rather than in spread-eagle fashion because he had no reason to believe respondent would be violent.

While this difference between the situation presented in Terry and the context presented in this case would tend to suggest a lesser authority to search here than was permitted in Terry, other distinctions between the two cases suggest just the opposite. As the Court of Appeals noted, a crucial feature distinguishing the in-custody arrest from the Terry context “ 'is not the greater likelihood that a person taken into custody is armed, but rather the increased likelihood of danger to the officer if in fact the person is armed.’ ” 153 U. S. App. D. C., at 130, 471 F. 2d, at 1098, quoting People v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 7 Cal. 3d, at 214, 496 P. 2d, at 1225 (Wright, C. J., concurring) (emphasis in original). A Terry stop involves a momentary encounter between officer and suspect, while an in-custody arrest places the two in close proximity *254for a much longer period of time. If the individual happens to have a weapon on his person, he will certainly have much more opportunity to use it against the officer in the in-custody situation. The prolonged proximity also makes it more likely that the individual will be able to extricate any small hidden weapon which might go undetected in a weapons frisk, such as a safety pin or razor blade. In addition, a suspect taken into custody may feel more threatened by the serious restraint on his liberty than a person who is simply stopped by an officer for questioning, and may therefore be more likely to resort to force.

Thus, in some senses there is less need for a weapons search in the in-custody traffic arrest situation than in a Terry context; while in other ways, there is a greater need. Balancing these competing considerations in order to determine what is a reasonable warrantless search in the traffic arrest context is a difficult process, one for which there may be no easy analytical guideposts. We are dealing with factors not easily quantified and,, therefore, not easily weighed one against the other. And the competing interests we are protecting — the individual’s interest in remaining free from unnecessarily intrusive invasions of privacy and society’s interest that police officers not take unnecessary risks in the performance of their duties — are each deserving of our most serious attention and do not themselves tip the balance in any particular direction.

As will be explained more fully below, I do not think it necessary to solve this balancing equation in this particular case. It is important to note, however, in view of the reasoning adopted by the majority, that available empirical evidence supports the result reached by the plurality of the Court of Appeals, rather than the result reached by the Court today.

*255The majority relies on statistics indicating that a significant percentage of murders of police officers occurs when the officers are making traffic stops. But these statistics only confirm what we recognized in Terry — that “American criminals have a long tradition of armed violence, and every year in this country many law enforcement officers are killed in the line of duty, and thousands more are wounded.” Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 23. As the very next sentence in Terry recognized, however, “[virtually all of these deaths and a substantial portion of the injuries are inflicted with guns and knives.” Id., at 24. The statistics relied on by the Government in this case support this observation. Virtually all of the killings are caused by guns and knives, the very type of weapons which will not go undetected in a properly conducted weapons frisk.5 It requires more than citation to these statistics, then, to support the proposition that it is reasonable for police officers to conduct more than a Terry-type frisk for weapons when seeking to disarm a traffic offender who is taken into custody.

C

The majority opinion fails to recognize that the search conducted by Officer Jenks did not merely involve a search of respondent’s person. It also included a separate search of effects found on his person. And even were we to assume, arguendo, that it was reasonable for Jenks to remove the object he felt in respondent’s pocket, clearly there was no justification consistent with *256the Fourth Amendment which would authorize his opening the package and looking inside.

To begin with, after Jenks had the cigarette package in his hands, there is no indication that he had reason to believe or did in fact believe that the package contained a weapon. More importantly, even if the crumpled-up cigarette package had in fact contained some sort of small weapon, it would have been impossible for respondent to have used it once the package was in the officer’s hands. Opening the package, therefore, did not further the protective purpose of the search. Even the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals conceded that “since the package was now in the officer’s possession, any risk of the prisoner’s use of a weapon in this package had been eliminated.” 6 153 U. S. App. D. C., at 150, 471 F. 2d, at 1118 (Wilkey, J., dissenting).

It is suggested, however, that since the custodial arrest itself represents a significant intrusion into the privacy of the person, any additional intrusion by way of opening or examining effects found on the person is not worthy of constitutional protection. But such an approach was expressly rejected by the Court in Chimel. There it *257was suggested that since the police had lawfully entered petitioner's house to effect an arrest, the additional invasion of privacy stemming from an accompanying search of the entire house was inconsequential. The Court answered: “[W]e can see no reason why, simply because some interference with an individual’s privacy and freedom of movement has lawfully taken place, further intrusions should automatically be allowed despite the absence of a warrant that the Fourth Amendment would otherwise require.” 395 U. S., at 766-767, n. 12.

The Fourth Amendment preserves the right of “the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures . . . .” Chimel established the principle that the lawful right of the police to interfere with the security of the person did not, standing alone, automatically confer the right to interfere with the security and privacy of his house. Hence, the mere fact of an arrest should be no justification, in and of itself, for invading the privacy of the individual’s personal effects.

The Government argues that it is difficult to see what constitutionally protected “expectation of privacy” a prisoner has in the interior of a cigarette pack. One wonders if the result in this case would have been the same were respondent a businessman who was lawfully taken into custody for driving without a license and whose wallet was taken from him by the police. Would it be reasonable for the police officer, because of the possibility that a razor blade was hidden somewhere in the wallet, to open it, remove all the contents, and examine each item carefully? Or suppose a lawyer lawfully arrested for a traffic offense is found to have a sealed envelope on his person. Would it be permissible for the arresting officer to tear open the envelope in order to make sure that it did not contain a clandestine weapon— perhaps a pin or a razor blade? Cf. Harris v. United *258 States, 331 U. S. 145 (1947); Chimel v. California, supra, at 758. Would it not be more consonant with the purpose of the Fourth Amendment and the legitimate needs of the police to require the officer, if he has any question whatsoever about what the wallet or letter contains, to hold on to it until the arrestee is brought to the precinct station? 7

*259I, for one, cannot characterize any of these intrusions into the privacy of an individual’s papers and effects as being negligible incidents to the more serious intrusion into the individual’s privacy stemming from the arrest itself. Nor can any principled distinction be drawn between the hypothetical searches I have posed and the search of the cigarette package in this case. The only reasoned distinction is between warrantless searches which serve legitimate protective and evidentiary functions and those that do not. See Chimel, supra, at 766.

The search conducted by Officer Jenks in this case went far beyond what was reasonably necessary to protect him from harm or to ensure that respondent would not effect an escape from custody. In my view, it therefore fell outside the scope of a properly drawn “search incident to arrest” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals holding that the fruits of the search should have been suppressed at respondent’s trial.

Justice Stewart

delivered the opinion of the Court.

When the occupant of an automobile is subjected to a lawful custodial arrest, does the constitutionally permissible scope of a search incident to his arrest include the passenger compartment of the automobile in which he was riding? That is the question at issue in the present case.

I

On April 9, 1978, Trooper Douglas Nicot, a New York State policeman driving an unmarked car on the New York Thruway, was passed by another automobile traveling at an excessive rate of speed. Nicot gave chase, overtook the speeding vehicle, and ordered its driver to pull it over to the side of the road and stop. There were four men in the car, one of whom was Roger Belton, the respondent in this case. The policeman asked to see the driver’s license and automobile registration, and discovered that none of the men owned the vehicle or was related to its owner. Meanwhile, the policeman had smelled burnt marihuana and had seen on *456the floor of the car an envelope marked “Supergold” that he associated with marihuana. He therefore directed the men to get out of the car, and placed them under arrest for the unlawful possession of marihuana. He patted down each of the men and “split them up into four separate areas of the Thruway at this time so they would not be in physical touching area of each other.” He then picked up the envelope marked “Supergold” and found that it contained marihuana. After giving the arrestees the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, the state policeman searched each one of them. He then searched the passenger compartment of the car. On the back seat he found a black leather jacket belonging to Belton. He unzipped one of the pockets of the jacket and discovered cocaine. Placing the jacket in his automobile, he drove the four arrestees to a nearby police station.

Belton was subsequently indicted for criminal possession of a controlled substance. In the trial court he moved that the cocaine the trooper had seized from the jacket pocket be suppressed. The court denied the motion. Belton then pleaded guilty to a lesser included offense, but preserved his claim that the cocaine had been seized in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. See Lefkowitz v. Newsome, 420 U. S. 283. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the search and seizure, reasoning that “[o]nce defendant was validly arrested for possession of marihuana, the officer was justified in searching the immediate area for other contraband.” 68 App. Div. 2d 198, 201, 416 N. Y. S. 2d 922, 926.

The New York Court of Appeals reversed, holding that “[a] warrantless search of the zippered pockets of an unacces-sible jacket may not be upheld as a search incident to a lawful arrest where there is no longer any danger that the arrestee or a confederate might gain access to the article.” 60 N. Y. 2d 447, 449, 407 N. E. 2d 420, 421. Two judges dis*457sented. They pointed out that the “search was conducted by a lone peace officer who was in the process of arresting four unknown individuals whom he had stopped in a speeding car owned by none of them and apparently containing an uncertain quantity of a controlled substance. The suspects were standing by the side of the car as the officer gave it a quick check to confirm his suspicions before attempting to transport them to police headquarters . . . Id., at 454, 407 N. E. 2d, at 424. We granted certiorari to consider the constitutionally permissible scope of a search in circumstances such as these. 449 U. S. 1109.

II

It is a first principle of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that the police may not conduct a search unless they first convince a neutral magistrate that there is probable cause to do so. This Court has recognized, however, that “the exigencies of the situation” may sometimes make exemption from the warrant requirement “imperative.” McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 456. Specifically, the Court held in Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, that a lawful custodial arrest creates a situation which justifies the contemporaneous search without a warrant of the person arrested and of the immediately surrounding area. Such searches have long been considered valid because of the need “to remove any weapons that [the arrestee] might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape” and the need to prevent the concealment or destruction of evidence. Id., at 763.

The Court’s opinion in Chimel emphasized the principle that, as the Court had said in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 19, “[t]he scope of [a] search must be 'strictly tied to and justified by’ the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.” Quoted in Chimel v. California, supra, at 762. Thus while the Court in Chimel found “ample justification” for a search of “the area from within which [an arrestee] *458might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence,” the Court found “no comparable justification ... for routinely searching any room other than that in which an arrest occurs — or, for that matter, for searching through all the desk drawers or other closed or concealed areas in that room itself.” 395 U. S., at 763.

Although the principle that limits a search incident to a lawful custodial arrest may be stated clearly enough, courts have discovered the principle difficult to apply in specific cases. Yet, as one commentator has pointed out, the protection of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments “can only be realized if the police are acting under a set of rules which, in most instances, makes it possible to reach a correct determination beforehand as to whether an invasion of privacy is justified in the interest of law enforcement.” LaFave, “Case-By-Case Adjudication” versus “Standardized Procedures”: The Robinson Dilemma, 1974 S. Ct. Rev. 127, 142. This is because

“Fourth Amendment doctrine, given force and effect by the exclusionary rule, is primarily intended to regulate the police in their day-to-day activities and thus ought to be expressed in terms that are readily applicable by the police in the context of the law enforcement activities in which they are necessarily engaged. A highly sophisticated set of rules, qualified by all sorts of ifs, ands, and buts and requiring the drawing of subtle nuances and hairline distinctions, may be the sort of heady stuff upon which the facile minds of lawyers and judges eagerly feed, but they may be 'literally impossible of application by the officer in the field.’ ” Id., at 141.

In short, “[a] single familiar standard is essential to guide police officers, who have only limited time and expertise to reflect on and balance the social and individual interests involved in the specific circumstances they confront.” Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 213-214.

*459So it was that, in United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, the Court hewed to a straightforward rule, easily applied, and predictably enforced: “[I]n the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a 'reasonable’ search under that Amendment.” Id., at 235. In so holding, the Court rejected the suggestion that “there must be litigated in each case the issue of whether or not there was present one of the reasons supporting the authority for a search of the person incident to a lawful arrest.” Ibid.

But no straightforward rule has emerged from the litigated cases respecting the question involved here — the question of the proper scope of a search of the interior of an automobile incident to a lawful custodial arrest of its occupants. The difficulty courts have had is reflected in the conflicting views of the New York judges who dealt with the problem in the present case, and is confirmed by a look at even a small sample drawn from the narrow class of cases in which courts have decided whether, in the course of a search incident to the lawful custodial arrest of the occupants of an automobile, police may search inside the automobile after the arrestees are no longer in it. On the one hand, decisions in cases such as United States v. Sanders, 631 F. 2d 1309 (CA8 1980); United States v. Dixon, 558 F. 2d 919 (CA9 1977); and United States v. Frick, 490 F. 2d 666 (CA5 1973), have upheld such warrantless searches as incident to lawful arrests. On the other hand, in cases such as United States v. Benson, 631 F. 2d 1336 (CA8 1980), and United States v. Rigales, 630 F. 2d 364 (CA5 1980), such searches, in comparable factual circumstances, have been held constitutionally invalid.1

When a person cannot know how a court will apply a *460settled principle to a recurring factual situation, that person cannot know the scope of his constitutional protection, nor can a policeman know the scope of his authority. While the Chimel case established that a search incident to an arrest may not stray beyond the area within the immediate control of the arrestee, courts have found no workable definition of “the area within the immediate control of the arrestee” when that area arguably includes the interior of an automobile and the arrestee is its recent occupant. Our reading of the cases suggests the generalization that articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment of an automobile are in fact generally, even if not inevitably, within “the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary ite[m].” Chimel, 395 U. S., at 763. In order to establish the workable rule this category of cases requires, we read Chimel’s definition of the limits of the area that may be searched in light of that generalization. Accordingly, we hold that when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile,2 he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.3

It follows from this conclusion that the police may also examine the contents of any containers found within the passenger compartment, for if the passenger compartment is within reach of the arrestee, so also will containers in it be within his reach.4 United States v. Robinson, supra; Draper *461v. United States, 358 U. S. 307. Such a container may, of course, be searched whether it is open or closed, since the justification for the search is not that the arrestee has no privacy interest in the container, but that the lawful custodial arrest justifies the infringement of any privacy interest the arrestee may have. Thus, while the Court in Chimel held that the police could not search all the drawers in an arrestee’s house simply because the police had arrested him at home, the Court noted that drawers within an arrestee’s reach could be searched because of the danger their contents might pose to the police. 395 U. S., at 763.

It is true, of course, that these containers will sometimes be such that they could hold neither a weapon nor evidence of the criminal conduct for which the suspect was arrested. However, in United States v. Robinson, the Court rejected the argument that such a container — there a “crumpled up' cigarette package” — located during a search of Robinson incident to his arrest could not be searched: “The authority to search the person incident to a lawful custodial arrest, while based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence, does not depend on what a court may later decide was the probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found upon the person of the suspect. A custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification.” 414 U. S., at 235.

The New York Court of Appeals relied upon United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, and Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, in concluding that the search and seizure in the present case were constitutionally invalid.5 But neither of those *462cases involved an arguably valid search incident to a lawful custodial arrest. As the Court pointed out in the Chadwick case: “Here the search was conducted more than an hour after federal agents had gained exclusive control of the footlocker and long after respondents were securely in custody; the search therefore cannot be viewed as incidental to the arrest or as justified by any other exigency.” 433 U. S., at 15. And in the Sanders case, the Court explicitly stated that it did not “consider the constitutionality of searches of luggage incident to the arrest of its possessor. See, e. g., United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973). The State has not argued that respondent’s suitcase was searched incident to his arrest, and it appears that the bag was not within his ‘immediate control’ at the time of the search.” 442 U. S., at 764, n. 11. (The suitcase in question was in the trunk of the taxicab. See n. 4, supra.)

Ill

It is not questioned that the respondent was the subject of a lawful custodial arrest on a charge of possessing marihuana. The search of the respondent’s jacket followed immediately upon that arrest. The jacket was located inside the passenger compartment of the car in which the respondent had been a passenger just before he was arrested. The jacket was. thus within the area which we have concluded was “within the arrestee’s immediate control” within the meaning of the Chimel case.6 The search of the jacket, therefore, was a *463search incident to a lawful custodial arrest, and it did not violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Accordingly, the judgment is reversed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Rehnquist,

concurring.

Because it is apparent that a majority of the Court is unwilling to overrule Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961), and because the Court does not find it necessary to consider the “automobile exception” in its disposition of this case, ante, at 462-463, n. 6, see Robbins v. California, ante, p. 437 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting), I join the opinion of the Court.

Justice Stevens,

concurring in the judgment.

For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Robbins v. California, ante, p. 444, I agree with Justice Brennan, Justice White, Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Rehnquist that these two cases should be decided in the same way, and I also agree with The Chief Justice, Justice Stewart, Justice Blackmun, Justice Powell, and Justice Rehnquist that this judgment should be reversed.

Justice Brennan,

with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.

In Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), this Court carefully analyzed more than 50 years of conflicting precedent governing the permissible scope of warrantless searches incident to custodial arrest. The Court today turns its back on the product of that analysis, formulating an arbitrary “bright-fine” rule applicable to “recent” occupants of automobiles that fails to reflect Chimel’s underlying policy justifications. While the Court claims to leave Chimel intact, see ante, at 460, n. 3,1 fear that its unwarranted abandonment of *464the principles underlying that decision may signal a wholesale retreat from our carefully developed search-incident-to-arrest analysis. I dissent.

I

It has long been a fundamental principle of Fourth Amendment analysis that exceptions to the warrant requirement are to be narrowly construed. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, 759-760 (1979); Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 393-394 (1978); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 454-455 (1971); Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U. S. 30, 34 (1970); Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967); Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493, 499 (1958). Predicated on the Fourth Amendment’s essential purpose of “shield[ing] the citizen from unwarranted intrusions into his privacy,” Jones v. United States, supra, at 498, this principle carries with it two corollaries. First, for a search to be valid under the Fourth Amendment, it must be “ ‘strictly tied to and justified by’ the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 19 (1968), quoting Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 310 (1967) (Fortas, J., concurring). See Chimel v. California, supra, at 762; Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U. S. 291, 295 (1973). Second, in determining whether to grant an exception to the warrant requirement, courts should carefully consider the facts and circumstances of each search and seizure, focusing on the reasons supporting the exception rather than on any bright-line rule of general application. See Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 59 (1968); Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 367 (1964).1

The Chimel exception to the warrant requirement was designed with two principal concerns in mind: the safety of the arresting officer and the preservation of easily concealed or destructible evidence. Recognizing that a suspect might have *465access to weapons or contraband at the time of arrest, the Court declared:

"When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer’s safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule.” 395 IT. S., at 762-763.

The Chimel standard was narrowly tailored to address these concerns: it permits police officers who have effected a custodial arrest to conduct a warrantless search “of the ar-restee’s person and the area 'within his immediate control’— construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” Id., at 763. It thus places a temporal and a spatial limitation on searches incident to arrest, excusing compliance with the warrant requirement only when the search “ ‘is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest.’ ” Shipley v. California, 395 U. S. 818, 819 (1969), quoting Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483, 486 (1964). See United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 14-15 (1977); Dyke v. Taylor Implement Mfg. Co., 391 U. S. 216, 220 (1968); Preston v. United States, supra, at 367; United States v. Edwards, 415 U. S. 800, 810 (1974) (Stewart, J., dissenting).2 When the arrest has been *466consummated and the arrestee safely taken into custody, the justifications underlying Chimel's limited exception to the warrant requirement cease to apply: at that point there is no possibility that the arrestee could reach weapons or contraband. See Chimel v. California, supra, at 764.

In its attempt to formulate a “ 'single, familiar standard . . . to guide police officers, who have only limited time and expertise to reflect on and balance the social and individual interests involved in the specific circumstances they confront/ ” ante, at 458, quoting Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 213-214 (1979), the Court today disregards these principles, and instead adopts a fiction — that the interior of a car is always within the immediate control of an arrestee who has recently been in the car. The Court thus holds:

“[W]hen 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 . . . [and] may also examine the contents of any containers found within the passenger compartment . . . Ante, at 460.

In so holding, the Court ignores both precedent and principle and fails to achieve its objective of providing police officers with a more workable standard for determining the permissible scope of searches incident to arrest.

II

As the facts of this case make clear, the Court today substantially expands the permissible scope of searches incident to arrest by permitting police officers to search areas and containers the arrestee could not possibly reach at the time of arrest. These facts demonstrate that at the time Belton and his three companions were placed under custodial arrest— which was after they had been removed from the car, patted down, and separated — none of them could have reached the jackets that had been left on the back seat of the car. The *467New York Court of Appeals described the sequence of events as follows:

“On April 9, 1978, defendant and three companions were traveling on the New York State Thruway in Ontario County when their car was stopped by a State trooper for speeding. Upon approaching the vehicle, the officer smelled the distinct odor of marihuana emanating from within and observed on the floor an envelope which he recognized as a type that is.commonly used to sell the substance. At that point the officer ordered the occupants out of the vehicle, patted each down, removed the envelope from the floor and ascertained that it contained a small amount of marihuana.

“After the marihuana was found, the individuals, still standing outside the car, were placed under arrest. The officer then re-entered the vehicle, searched the passenger compartment and seized the marihuana cigarette butts lying in the ashtrays. He also rifled through the pockets of five jackets on the hack seat. Upon opening the zippered pocket of one of them, he discovered a small amount of cocaine and defendant’s identification.” 50 N. Y. 2d 447, 449, 407 N. E. 2d 420, 421 (1980) (emphasis added).3

Concluding that a “warrantless search of the zippered pockets of an unaccessible jacket may not be upheld as a search incident to a lawful arrest where there is no longer any danger that the arrestee or a confederate might gain access to the article,” ibid, (emphasis added), the court further stated:

“One searches the record in vain for support of the dissenter’s claim that at the time of the arrest — the point from which the predicate for the warrantless search is measured — 'the jackets were within reach of the four sus*468pects and had not yet been reduced to the exclusive control of the officer.’ ” Id., at 452, n. 2, 407 N. E. 2d, at 423, n. 2, quoting id., at 454, 407 N. E. 2d, at 424 (dissenting opinion).

By approving the constitutionality of the warrantless search in this case, the Court carves out a dangerous precedent that is not justified by the concerns underlying Chimel. Disregarding the principle “that the scope of a warrantless search must be commensurate with the rationale that excepts the search from the warrant requirement,” Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U. S., at 295, the Court for the first time grants police officers authority to conduct a warrantless “area” search under circumstances where there is no chance that the arrestee “might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” Chimel v. California, 395 U. S., at 763. Under the approach taken today, the result would presumably be the same even if Officer Nicot had handcuffed Belton and his companions in the patrol car before placing them under arrest, and even if his search had extended to locked luggage or other inaccessible containers located in the back seat of the car.

This expansion of the Chimel exception is both analytically unsound and inconsistent with every significant search-incident-to-arrest case we have decided in which the issue was whether the police could lawfully conduct a warrantless search of the area surrounding the arrestee. See, e. g., United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 15 (search of footlocker “conducted more than an hour after federal agents had gained exclusive control of the footlocker and long after respondents were securely in custody” not incident to arrest); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S., at 456-457, and n. 11 (search of car in driveway not incident to arrest in house); Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, 47 (1970) (warrantless search of car invalid once arrestee has been placed in police custody); Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U. S., at 35 (area of immediate control does not extend to inside of house when suspect is arrested on front step); Dyke v. Taylor Implement Mfg. Co., 391 U. S., at 220 *469(search of car after occupant placed in custody and taken to courthouse not valid as incident to arrest); Preston v. United States, 376 U. S., at 368 (search of car not valid as incident to arrest: although suspects were in car when arrested, they were in custody at police station when car was searched). These cases demonstrate that the crucial question under Chimel is not whether the arrestee could ever have reached the area that was searched, but whether he could have reached it at the time of arrest and search. If not, the officer’s failure to obtain a warrant may not be excused.4 By disregarding this settled doctrine, the Court does a great disservice not only to stare decisis, but to the policies underlying the Fourth Amendment as well.

111

The Court seeks to justify its departure from the principles underlying Chimel by proclaiming the need for a new “bright-line” rule to guide the officer in the field. As we pointed out in Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S., at 393, however, “the mere fact that law enforcement may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth Amendment.” Moreover, the Court’s attempt to forge a “bright-line” rule fails on its own terms. While the “interior/trunk” distinction may provide a workable guide in certain routine cases— for example, where the officer arrests the driver of a car and then immediately searches the seats and floor — in the long run, I suspect it will create far more problems than it solves. The Court’s new approach leaves open too many questions and, more important, it provides the police and the courts with too few tools with which to find the answers.

Thus, although the Court concludes that a warrantless search of a car may take place even though the suspect was *470arrested outside the car, it does not indicate how long after the suspect’s arrest that search may validly be conducted. Would a warrantless search incident to arrest be valid if conducted five minutes after the suspect left his car? Thirty minutes? Three hours? Does it matter whether the suspect is standing in close proximity to the car when the search is conducted? Does it matter whether the police formed probable cause to arrest before or after the suspect left his car? And why is the rule announced today necessarily limited to searches of cars? What if a suspect is seen walking out of a house where the police, peering in from outside, had formed probable cause to believe a crime was being committed? Could the police then arrest that suspect and enter the house to conduct a search incident to arrest? Even assuming today’s rule is limited to searches of the “interior” of cars — an assumption not demanded by logic — what is meant by “interior”? Does it include locked glove compartments, the interior of door panels, or the area under the floorboards? Are special rules necessary for station wagons and hatchbacks, where the luggage compartment may be reached through the interior, or taxicabs, where a glass panel might separate the driver’s compartment from the rest of the car? Are the only containers that may be searched those that are large enough to be “capable of holding another object”? Or does the new rule apply to any container, even if it “could hold neither a weapon nor evidence of the criminal conduct for which the suspect was arrested”? Compare ante, at 460-461, n. 4, with ante, at 461.

The Court does not give the police any “bright-line” answers to these questions. More important, because the Court’s new rule abandons the justifications underlying Chimel, it offers no guidance to the police officer seeking to work out these answers for himself. As we warned in Chimel: “No consideration relevant to the Fourth Amendment suggests any point of rational limitation, once the search is allowed to go beyond the area from which the person arrested *471might obtain weapons or evidentiary items.” 395 U. S., at 766. See also Mincey v. Arizona, supra, at 393. By failing to heed this warning, the Court has undermined rather than furthered the goal of consistent law enforcement: it has failed to offer any principles to guide the police and the courts in their application of the new rule to nonroutine situations.

The standard announced in Chimel is not nearly as difficult to apply as the Court suggests. To the contrary, I continue to believe that Chimel provides a sound, workable rule for determining the constitutionality of a warrantless search incident to arrest. Under Chimel, searches incident to arrest may be conducted without a warrant only if limited to the person of the arrestee, see United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973), or to the area within the arrestee’s “immediate control.” While it may be difficult in some cases to measure the exact scope of the arrestee’s immediate control, relevant factors would surely include the relative number of police officers and arrestees, the manner of restraint placed on the arrestee, and the ability of the arrestee to gain access to a particular area or container.5 Certainly there will be some close cases, but when in doubt the police can always turn to the rationale underlying Chimel — the need to prevent the arrestee from reaching weapons or contraband — before *472exercising their judgment. A rule based on that rationale should provide more guidance than the rule announced by the Court today. Moreover, unlike the Court’s rule, it would be faithful to the Fourth Amendment.

Justice White,

with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.

In Robbins v. California, ante, p. 420, it was held that a wrapped container in the trunk of a car could not be searched without a warrant even though the trunk itself could be searched without a warrant because there was probable cause to search the car and even though there was probable cause to search the container as well. This was because of the separate interest in privacy with respect to the container. The Court now holds that as incident to the arrest of the driver or any other person in an automobile, the interior of the car and any container found therein, whether locked or not, may be not only seized but also searched even absent probable cause to believe that contraband or evidence of crime will be found. As to luggage, briefcases, or other containers, this seems to me an extreme extension of Chimel and one to which I cannot subscribe. Even if the decision in Robbins had been otherwise and United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), and Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 (1979), had been overruled, luggage found in the trunk of a car could not be searched without probable cause to believe it contained contraband or evidence. Here, searches of luggage, briefcases, and other containers in the interior of an auto are authorized in the absence of any suspicion whatsoever that they contain anything in which the police have a legitimate interest. This calls for more caution than the Court today exhibits, and, with respect, I dissent.

*335Justice Stevens

delivered the opinion of the Court.

After Rodney Gant was arrested for driving with a suspended license, handcuffed, and locked in the back of a patrol car, police officers searched his car and discovered cocaine in the pocket of a jacket on the backseat. Because Gant could not have accessed his ear to retrieve weapons or evidence at the time of the search, the Arizona Supreme Court held that the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, as defined in Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), and applied to vehicle searches in New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981), did not justify the search in this case. We agree with that conclusion.

Under Chimel, police may search incident to arrest only the space within an arrestee’s “ ‘immediate control,’ ” meaning “the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” 395 U. S., at 763. The safety and evidentiary justifications underlying Chimel's reaching-distance rule determine Belton's scope. Accordingly, we hold that Belton does not authorize a vehicle search incident to a recent occupant’s arrest after the arrestee has been secured and cannot access the interior of the vehicle. Consistent with the holding in Thornton v. United States, 541 U. S. 615 (2004), and following the suggestion in Justice Scalia’s opinion concurring in the judgment in that case, id., at 632, we also conclude that circumstances unique to the automobile context justify a search incident to arrest when it is reasonable to believe that evidence of the offense of arrest might be found in the vehicle.

I

On August 25, 1999, acting on an anonymous tip that the residence at 2524 North Walnut Avenue was being used to sell drugs, Tucson police officers Griffith and Reed knocked on the front door and asked to speak to the owner. Gant answered the door and, after identifying himself, stated that *336he expected the owner to return later. The officers left the residence and conducted a records check, which revealed that Gant’s driver’s license had been suspended and there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest for driving with a suspended license.

When the officers returned to the house that evening, they found a man near the back of the house and a woman in a car parked in front of it. After a third officer arrived, they arrested the man for providing a false name and the woman for possessing drug paraphernalia. Both arrestees were handcuffed and secured in separate patrol cars when Gant arrived. The officers recognized his car as it entered the driveway, and Officer Griffith confirmed that Gant was the driver by shining a flashlight into the car as it drove by him. Gant parked at the end of the driveway, got out of his car, and shut the door. Griffith, who was about 30 feet away, called to Gant, and they approached each other, meeting 10-to-12 feet from Gant’s car. Griffith immediately arrested Gant and handcuffed him.

Because the other arrestees were secured in the only patrol cars at the scene, Griffith called for backup. When two more officers arrived, they locked Gant in the backseat of their vehicle. After Gant had been handcuffed and placed in the back of a patrol car, two officers searched his car: One of them found a gun, and the other discovered a bag of cocaine in the pocket of a jacket on the backseat.

Gant was charged with two offenses — possession of a narcotic drug for sale and possession of drug paraphernalia (1 e., the plastic bag in which the cocaine was found). He moved to suppress the evidence seized from his car on the ground that the warrantless search violated the Fourth Amendment. Among other things, Gant argued that Belton did not authorize the search of his vehicle because he posed no threat to the officers after he was handcuffed in the patrol car and because he was arrested for a traffic offense for which no evidence could be found in his vehicle. When asked at the *337suppression hearing why the search was conducted, Officer Griffith responded: “Because the law says we can do it.” App. 75.

The trial court rejected the State’s contention that the officers had probable cause to search Gant’s car for contraband when the search began, id., at 18, 30, but it denied the motion to suppress. Relying on the fact that the police saw Gant commit the crime of driving without a license and apprehended him only shortly after he exited his ear, the court held that the search was permissible as a search incident to arrest. Id., at 37. A jury found Gant guilty on both drug counts, and he was sentenced to a 3-year term of imprisonment.

After protracted state-court proceedings, the Arizona Supreme Court concluded that the search of Gant’s car was unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The court’s opinion discussed at length our decision in Belton, which held that police may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle and any containers therein as a contemporaneous incident of an arrest of the vehicle’s recent occupant. 216 Ariz. 1, 3-4, 162 R 3d 640, 642-643 (2007) (citing 453 U. S., at 460). The court distinguished Belton as a case concerning the permissible scope of a vehicle search incident to arrest and concluded that it did not answer “the threshold question whether the police may conduct a search incident to arrest at all once the scene is secure.” 216 Ariz., at 4, 162 R 3d, at 643. Relying on our earlier decision in Chimel, the court observed that the search-ineident-toarrest exception to the warrant requirement is justified by interests in officer safety and evidence preservation. 216 Ariz., at 4,162 P. 3d, at 643. When “the justifications underlying Chimel no longer exist because the scene is secure and the arrestee is handcuffed, secured in the back of a patrol ear, and under the supervision of an officer,” the court concluded, a “warrantless search of the arrestee’s car cannot be justified as necessary to protect the officers at the scene or *338prevent the destruction of evidence.” Id., at 5,162 P. 3d, at 644. Accordingly, the court held that the search of Gant’s ear was unreasonable.

The dissenting justices would have upheld the search of Gant's car based on their view that “the validity of a Belton search . . . clearly does not depend on the presence of the Chimel rationales in a particular case.” Id., at 8, 162 P. 3d, at 647. Although they disagreed with the majority’s view of Belton, the dissenting justices acknowledged that “[t]he bright-line rule embraced in Belton has long been criticized and probably merits reconsideration.” 216 Ariz., at 10, 162 P. 3d, at 649. They thus “add[ed their] voice[s] to the others that have urged the Supreme Court to revisit Belton.” Id., at 11, 162 P. 3d, at 650.

The chorus that has called for us to revisit Belton includes courts, scholars, and Members of this Court who have questioned that decision’s clarity and its fidelity to Fourth Amendment principles. We therefore granted the State’s petition for certiorari. 552 U. S. 1230 (2008).

II

Consistent with our precedent, our analysis begins, as it should in every case addressing the reasonableness of a warrantless search, with the basic rule 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.” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967) (footnote omitted). Among the exceptions to the warrant requirement is a search incident to a lawful arrest. See Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, 392 (1914). The exception derives from interests in officer safety and evidence preservation that are typically implicated in arrest situations. See United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, 230-234 (1973); Chimel, 395 U. S., at 763.

*339In Chimel, we held that a search incident to arrest may only include “the arrestee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’ — construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” Ibid. That limitation, which continues to define the boundaries of the exception, ensures that the scope of a search incident to arrest is commensurate with its purposes of protecting arresting officers and safeguarding any evidence of the offense of arrest that an arrestee might conceal or destroy. See ibid, (noting that searches incident to arrest are reasonable “in order to remove any weapons [the arrestee] might seek to use” and “in order to prevent [the] concealment or destruction” of evidence (emphasis added)). If there is no possibility that an arrestee could reach into the area that law enforcement officers seek to search, both justifications for the search-incident-to-arrest exception are absent and the rule does not apply. E. g., Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 367-368 (1964).

In Belton, we considered ChimeVs application to the automobile context. A lone police officer in that case stopped a speeding car in which Belton was one of four occupants. While asking for the driver’s license and registration, the officer smelled burnt marijuana and observed an envelope on the car floor marked “Supergold” — a name he associated with marijuana. Thus having probable cause to believe the occupants had committed a drug offense, the officer ordered them out of the vehicle, placed them under arrest, and patted them down. Without handcuffing the arrestees,1 the officer “ ‘split them up into four separate areas of the Thruway ... so they would not be in physical touching area of each other’ ” and searched the vehicle, including the pocket of a jacket on the backseat, in which he found cocaine. 453 U. S., at 456.

*340The New York Court of Appeals found the search unconstitutional, concluding that after the occupants were arrested the vehicle and its contents were “safely within the exclusive custody and control of the police.” State v. Belton, 50 N. Y. 2d 447, 452, 407 N. E. 2d 420, 423 (1980). The State asked this Court to consider whether the exception recognized in Chimel permits an officer to search “a jacket found inside an automobile while the automobile’s four occupants, all under arrest, are standing unsecured around the vehicle.” Brief in No. 80-328, p. i. We granted certiorari because “courts ha[d] found no workable definition of ‘the area within the immediate control of the arrestee’ when that area arguably includes the interior of an automobile.” 453 U. S., at 460.

In its brief, the State argued that the Court of Appeals erred in concluding that the jacket was under the officer’s exclusive control. Focusing on the number of arrestees and their proximity to the vehicle, the State asserted that it was reasonable for the officer to believe the arrestees could have accessed the vehicle and its contents, making the search permissible under Chimel. Brief in No. 80-328, at 7-8. The United States, as amicus curiae in support of the State, argued for a more permissive standard, but it maintained that any search incident to arrest must be “ ‘substantially contemporaneous’ ” with the arrest — a requirement it deemed “satisfied if the search occurs during the period in which the arrest is being consummated and before the situation has so stabilized that it could be said that the arrest was completed.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in New York v. Belton, O. T. 1980, No. 80-328, p. 14. There was no suggestion by the parties or amici that Chimel authorizes a vehicle search incident to arrest when there is no realistic possibility that an arrestee could access his vehicle.

After considering these arguments, we held that when an officer lawfully arrests “the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the *341passenger compartment of the automobile” and any containers therein. Belton, 453 U. S., at 460 (footnote omitted). That holding was based in large part on our assumption “that articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment of an automobile are in fact generally, even if not inevitably, within ‘the area into which an arrestee might reach.’ ” Ibid.

The Arizona Supreme Court read our decision in Belton as merely delineating “the proper scope of a search of the interior of an automobile” incident to an arrest, id., at 459. That is, when the passenger compartment is within an arrestee’s reaching distance, Belton supplies the generalization that the entire compartment and any containers therein may be reached. On that view of Belton, the state court concluded that the search of Gant’s car was unreasonable because Gant clearly could not have accessed his car at the time of the search. It also found that no other exception to the warrant requirement applied in this case.

Gant now urges us to adopt the reading of Belton followed by the Arizona Supreme Court.

Ill

Despite the textual and evidentiary support for the Arizona Supreme Court’s reading of Belton, our opinion has been widely understood to allow a vehicle search incident to the arrest of a recent occupant even if there is no possibility the arrestee could gain access to the vehicle at the time of the search. This reading may be attributable to Justice Brennan’s dissent in Belton, in which he characterized the Court’s holding as resting on the “fiction... that the interior of a car is always within the immediate control of an arrestee who has recently been in the car.” Id., at 466. Under the majority’s approach, he argued, “the result would presumably be the same even if [the officer] had handcuffed Belton and his companions in the patrol car” before conducting the search. Id., at 468.

*342Since we decided Belton, Courts of Appeals have given different answers to the question whether a vehicle must be within an arrestee’s reach to justify a vehicle search incident to arrest,2 but Justice Brennan’s reading of the Court’s opinion has predominated. As Justice O’Connor observed, “lower court decisions seem now to treat the ability to search a vehicle incident to the arrest of a recent occupant as a police entitlement rather than as an exception justified by the twin rationales of Chimel.” Thornton, 541 U. S., at 624 (opinion concurring in part). Justice Scalia has similarly noted that, although it is improbable that an arrestee could gain access to weapons stored in his vehicle after he has been handcuffed and secured in the backseat of a patrol car, cases allowing a search in “this precise factual scenario . . . are legion.” Id., at 628 (opinion concurring in judgment) (collecting cases).3 Indeed, some courts have upheld searches *343under Belton “even when . . . the handcuffed arrestee has already left the scene.” 541 U. S., at 628 (same).

Under this broad reading of Belton, a vehicle search would be authorized incident to every arrest of a recent occupant notwithstanding that in most cases the vehicle’s passenger compartment will not be within the arrestee’s reach at the time of the search. To read Belton as authorizing a vehicle search incident to every recent occupant’s arrest would thus untether the rule from the justifications underlying the Chimel exception — a result clearly incompatible with our statement in Belton that it “in no way alters the fundamental principles established in the Chimel case regarding the basic scope of searches incident to lawful custodial arrests.” 453 U. S., at 460, n. 3. Accordingly, we reject this reading of Belton and hold that the Chimel rationale authorizes police to search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search.4

Although it does not follow from Chimel, we also conclude that circumstances unique to the vehicle context justify a search incident to a lawful arrest when it is “reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.” Thornton, 541 U. S., at 632 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). In many cases, as when a recent occupant is arrested for a traffic violation, there will be no reasonable basis to believe the vehicle contains relevant evidence. See, e. g., Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U. S. 318, *344324 (2001); Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U. S. 113, 118 (1998). But in others, including Belton and Thornton, the offense of arrest will supply a basis for searching the passenger compartment of an arrestee’s vehicle and any containers therein.

Neither the possibility of access nor the likelihood of discovering offense-related evidence authorized the search in this case. Unlike in Belton, which involved a single officer confronted with four unsecured arrestees, the five officers in this case outnumbered the three arrestees, all of whom had been handcuffed and secured in separate patrol cars before the officers searched Gant’s car. Under those circumstances, Gant clearly was not within reaching distance of his car at the time of the search. An evidentiary basis for the search was also lacking in this case. Whereas Belton and Thornton were arrested for drug offenses, Gant was arrested for driving with a suspended license — an offense for which police could not expect to find evidence in the passenger compartment of Gant’s car. Cf. Knowles, 525 U. S., at 118. Because police could not reasonably have believed either that Gant could have accessed his car at the time of the search or that evidence of the offense for which he was arrested might have been found therein, the search in this case was unreasonable.

IV

The State does not seriously disagree with the Arizona Supreme Court’s conclusion that Gant could not have accessed his vehicle at the time of the search, but it nevertheless asks us to uphold the search of his vehicle under the broad reading of Belton discussed above. The State argues that Belton searches are reasonable regardless of the possibility of access in a given case because that expansive rule correctly balances law enforcement interests, including the interest in a bright-line rule, with an arrestee’s limited privacy interest in his vehicle.

For several reasons, we reject the State’s argument. First, the State seriously undervalues the privacy interests *345at stake. Although we have recognized that a motorist’s privacy interest in his vehicle is less substantial than in his home, see New York v. Class, 475 U. S. 106, 112-113 (1986), the former interest is nevertheless important and deserving of constitutional protection, see Knowles, 525 U. S., at 117. It is particularly significant that Belton searches authorize police officers to search not just the passenger compartment but every purse, briefcase, or other container within that space. A rule that gives police the power to conduct such a search whenever an individual is caught committing a traffic offense, when there is no basis for believing evidence of the offense might be found in the vehicle, creates a serious and recurring threat to the privacy of countless individuals. Indeed, the character of that threat implicates the central concern underlying the Fourth Amendment — the concern about giving police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person’s private effects.5

At the same time as it undervalues these privacy concerns, the State exaggerates the clarity that its reading of Belton provides. Courts that have read Belton expansively are at odds regarding how close in time to the arrest and how prox*346imate to the arrestee’s vehicle an officer’s first contact with the arrestee must be to bring the encounter within Belton’s purview6 and whether a search is reasonable when it commences or continues after the arrestee has been removed from the scene.7 The rule has thus generated a great deal of uncertainty, particularly for a rule touted as providing a “bright line.” See 3 LaFave §7.1(c), at 514-524.

Contrary to the State’s suggestion, a broad reading of Belton is also unnecessary to protect law enforcement safety and evidentiary interests. Under our view, Belton and Thornton permit an officer to conduct a vehicle search when an arrestee is within reaching distance of the vehicle or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. Other established exceptions to the warrant requirement authorize a vehicle search under additional circumstances when safety or evidentiary concerns demand. For instance, Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983), permits an officer to search a vehicle’s passenger compartment when he has reasonable suspicion that an individual, whether or not the arrestee, is “dangerous” and might access the vehi*347cle to “gain immediate control of weapons.” Id., at 1049 (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 21 (1968)). If there is probable cause to believe a vehicle contains evidence of criminal activity, United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 820-821 (1982), authorizes a search of any area of the vehicle in which the evidence might be found. Unlike the searches permitted by Justice Scalia’s opinion concurring in the judgment in Thornton, which we conclude today are reasonable for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, Ross allows searches for evidence relevant to offenses other than the offense of arrest, and the scope of the search authorized is broader. Finally, there may be still other circumstances in which safety or evidentiary interests would justify a search. Cf. Maryland v. Buie, 494 U. S. 325, 334 (1990) (holding that, incident to arrest, an officer may conduct a limited protective sweep of those areas of a house in which he reasonably suspects a dangerous person may be hiding).

These exceptions together ensure that officers may search a vehicle when genuine safety or evidentiary concerns encountered during the arrest of a vehicle’s recent occupant justify a search. Construing Belton broadly to allow vehicle searches incident to any arrest would serve no purpose except to provide a police entitlement, and it is anathema to the Fourth Amendment to permit a warrantless search on that basis. For these reasons, we are unpersuaded by the State’s arguments that a broad reading of Belton would meaningfully further law enforcement interests and justify a substantial intrusion on individuals’ privacy.8

*348V

Our dissenting colleagues argue that the doctrine of stare decisis requires adherence to a broad reading of Belton even though the justifications for searching a vehicle incident to arrest are in most cases absent.9 The doctrine of stare decisis is of course “essential to the respect accorded to the judgments of the Court and to the stability of the law,” but it does not compel us to follow a past decision when its rationale no longer withstands “careful analysis.” Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 577 (2003).

We have never relied on stare decisis to justify the continuance of an unconstitutional police practice. And we would be particularly loath to uphold an unconstitutional result in a case that is so easily distinguished from the decisions that arguably compel it. The safety and evidentiary interests that supported the search in Belton simply are not present in this case. Indeed, it is hard to imagine two cases that are factually more distinct, as Belton involved one officer confronted by four unsecured arrestees suspected of committing a drug offense, and this case involves several officers confronted with a securely detained arrestee apprehended for driving with a suspended license. This case is also distinguishable from Thornton, in which the petitioner was *349arrested for a drug offense. It is thus unsurprising that Members of this Court who concurred in the judgments in Belton and Thornton also concur in the decision in this case.10

We do not agree with the contention in Justice Alito’s dissent (hereinafter dissent) that consideration of police reliance interests requires a different result. Although it appears that the State’s reading of Belton has been widely taught in police academies and that law enforcement officers have relied on the rule in conducting vehicle searches during the past 28 years,* 11 many of these searches were not justified by the reasons underlying the Chimel exception. Countless individuals guilty of nothing more serious than a traffic violation have had their constitutional right to the security of their private effects violated as a result. The fact that the law enforcement community may view the State’s version of the Belton rule as an entitlement does not establish the sort of reliance interest that could outweigh the countervailing interest that all individuals share in having their constitutional rights fully protected. If it is clear that a practice is unlawful, individuals’ interest in its discontinuance clearly outweighs any law enforcement “entitlement” to its persistence. Cf. Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 393 (1978) (“[T]he mere fact that law enforcement may be made more efficient can never by itself justify disregard of the Fourth Amendment”). The dissent’s reference in this regard to the reliance interests cited in Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428 (2000), is misplaced. See post, at 358-359. In ob*350serving that “Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture,” 530 U. S., at 443, the Court was referring not to police reliance on a rule requiring them to provide warnings but to the broader societal reliance on that individual right.

The dissent also ignores the checkered history of the search-incident-to-arrest exception. Police authority to search the place in which a lawful arrest is made was broadly asserted in Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192 (1927), and limited a few years later in Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344 (1931), and United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U. S. 452 (1932). The limiting views expressed in Go-Bart and Lefkowitz were in turn abandoned in Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 145 (1947), which upheld a search of a four-room apartment incident to the occupant’s arrest. Only a year later the Court in Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699, 708 (1948), retreated from that holding, noting that the search-incident-to-arrest exception is “a strictly limited” one that must be justified by “something more in the way of necessity than merely a lawful arrest.” And just two years after that, in United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56 (1950), the Court again reversed course and upheld the search of an entire apartment. Finally, our opinion in Chimel overruled Rabinowitz and what remained of Harris and established the present boundaries of the search-incident-to-arrest exception. Notably, none of the dissenters in Chimel or the cases that preceded it argued that law enforcement reliance interests outweighed the interest in protecting individual constitutional rights so as to warrant fidelity to an unjustifiable rule.

The experience of the 28 years since we decided Belton has shown that the generalization underpinning the broad reading of that decision is unfounded. We now know that articles inside the passenger compartment are rarely “within 'the area into which an arrestee might reach,’ ” 453 U. S., at *351460, and blind adherence to Belton’s faulty assumption would authorize myriad unconstitutional searches. The doctrine of stare decisis does not require us to approve routine constitutional violations.

VI

Police may search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only if the arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. When these justifications are absent, a search of an arrestee’s vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a warrant or show that another exception to the warrant requirement applies. The Arizona Supreme Court correctly held that this case involved an unreasonable search. Accordingly, the judgment of the State Supreme Court is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Scalia,

concurring.

To determine what is an “unreasonable” search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, we look first to the historical practices the Framers sought to preserve; if those provide inadequate guidance, we apply traditional standards of reasonableness. See Virginia v. Moore, 553 U. S. 164, 168-171 (2008). Since the historical scope of officers’ authority to search vehicles incident to arrest is uncertain, see Thornton v. United States, 541 U. S. 615, 629-631 (2004) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment), traditional standards of reasonableness govern. It is abundantly clear that those standards do not justify what I take to be the rule set forth in New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981), and Thornton: that arresting officers may always search an arrestee’s vehicle in order to protect themselves from hidden weapons. When an arrest is made in connection with a roadside stop, police virtually always have a less intrusive and more effective means of ensuring their safety — and a means that is vir*352tually always employed: ordering the arrestee away from the vehicle, patting him down in the open, handcuffing him, and placing him in the squad ear.

Law enforcement officers face a risk of being shot whenever they pull a car over. But that risk is at its height at the time of the initial confrontation; and it is not at all reduced by allowing a search of the stopped vehicle after the driver has been arrested and placed in the squad car. I observed in Thornton that the Government had failed to provide a single instance in which a formerly restrained arrestee escaped to retrieve a weapon from his own vehicle, 541 U. S., at 626; Arizona and its amici have not remedied that significant deficiency in the present ease.

It must be borne in mind that we are speaking here only of a rule automatically permitting a search when the driver or an occupant is arrested. Where no arrest is made, we have held that officers may search the car if they reasonably believe “the suspect is dangerous and ... may gain immediate control of weapons.” Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1049 (1983). In the no-arrest case, the possibility of access to weapons in the vehicle always exists, since the driver or passenger will be allowed to return to the vehicle when the interrogation is completed. The rule of Michigan v. Long is not at issue here.

Justice Stevens acknowledges that an officer-safety rationale cannot justify all vehicle searches incident to arrest, but asserts that that is not the rule Belton and Thornton adopted. (As described above, I read those cases differently.) Justice Stevens would therefore retain the application of Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), in the car-search context but would apply in the future what he believes our cases held in the past: that officers making a roadside stop may search the vehicle so long as the “arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search.” Ante, at 351. I believe that this *353standard fails to provide the needed guidance to arresting officers and also leaves much room for manipulation, inviting officers to leave the scene unsecured (at least where dangerous suspects are not involved) in order to conduct a vehicle search. In my view we should simply abandon the BeltonThornton charade of officer safety and overrule those cases. I would hold that a vehicle search incident to arrest is ipso facto “reasonable” only when the object of the search is evidence of the crime for which the arrest was made, or of another crime that the officer has probable cause to believe occurred. Because respondent was arrested for driving without a license (a crime for which no evidence could be expected to be found in the vehicle), I would hold in the present case that the search was unlawful.

Justice Alito insists that the Court must demand a good reason for abandoning prior precedent. That is true enough, but it seems to me ample reason that the precedent was badly reasoned and produces erroneous (in this case unconstitutional) results. See Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 827 (1991). We should recognize Belton’s fanciful reliance upon officer safety for what it was: “a return to the broader sort of [evidence-gathering] search incident to arrest that we allowed before Chimel.” Thornton, supra, at 631 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).

Justice Alito argues that there is no reason to adopt a rule limiting automobile-arrest searches to those cases where the search’s object is evidence of the crime of arrest. Post, at 364 (dissenting opinion). I disagree. This formulation of officers’ authority both preserves the outcomes of our prior cases and tethers the scope and rationale of the doctrine to the triggering, event. Belton, by contrast, allowed searches precisely when its exigency-based rationale was least applicable: The fact of the arrest in the automobile context makes searches on exigency grounds less reasonable, not more. I also disagree with Justice Alito’s conclusory *354assertion that this standard will be difficult to administer in practice, post, at 360-361; the ease of its application in this ease would suggest otherwise.

No other Justice, however, shares my view that application of Chimel in this context should be entirely abandoned. It seems to me unacceptable for the Court to come forth with a 4-to-l-to-4 opinion that leaves the governing rule uncertain. I am therefore confronted with the choice of either leaving the current understanding of Belton and Thornton in effect, or acceding to what seems to me the artificial narrowing of those cases adopted by Justice Stevens. The latter, as I have said, does not provide the degree of certainty I think desirable in this field; but the former opens the field to what I think are plainly unconstitutional searches — which is the greater evil. I therefore join the opinion of the Court.

Justice Breyer,

dissenting.

I agree with Justice Alito that New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981), is best read as setting forth a bright-line rule that permits a warrantless search of the passenger compartment of an automobile incident to the lawful arrest of an occupant — regardless of the danger the arrested individual in fact poses. I also agree with Justice Stevens, however, that the rule can produce results divorced from its underlying Fourth Amendment rationale. Compare Belton, supra, with Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, 764 (1969) (explaining that the rule allowing contemporaneous searches is justified by the need to prevent harm to a police officer or destruction of evidence of the crime). For that reason I would look for a better rule — were the question before us one of first impression.

The matter, however, is not one of first impression, and that fact makes a substantial difference. The Belton rule has been followed not only by this Court in Thornton v. United States, 541 U. S. 615 (2004), but also by numerous other courts. Principles of stare decisis must apply, and *355those who wish this Court to change a well-established legal precedent — where, as here, there has been considerable reliance on the legal rule in question — bear a heavy burden. Cf. Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 551 U.S. 877, 918-926 (2007) (Breyer, J., dissenting). I have not found that burden met. Nor do I believe that the other considerations ordinarily relevant when determining whether to overrule a case are satisfied. I consequently join Justice Alito’s dissenting opinion with the exception of Part II-E.

Justice Alito, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy join, and with whom Justice Breyer joins except as to Part II-E, dissenting.

Twenty-eight years ago, in New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454, 460 (1981), this Court held 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.” (Footnote omitted.) Five years ago, in Thornton v. United States, 541 U. S. 615 (2004) — a case involving a situation not materially distinguishable from the situation here — the Court not only reaffirmed but extended the holding of Belton, making it applicable to recent occupants. Today’s decision effectively overrules those important decisions, even though respondent Gant has not asked us to do so.

To take the place of the overruled precedents, the Court adopts a new two-part rule under which a police officer who arrests a vehicle occupant or recent occupant may search the passenger compartment if (1) the arrestee is within reaching distance of the vehicle at the time of the search or (2) the officer has reason to believe that the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest. Ante, at 351. The first part of this new rule may endanger arresting officers and is truly endorsed by only four Justices; Justice Scalia joins solely for the purpose of avoiding a “4-to-l-to-4 opinion.” Ante, at *356354 (concurring opinion). The second part of the new rule is taken from Justice Scalia’s separate opinion in Thornton without any independent explanation of its origin or justification and is virtually certain to confuse law enforcement officers and judges for some time to come. The Court’s decision will cause the suppression of evidence gathered in many searches carried out in good-faith reliance on well-settled ease law, and although the Court purports to base its analysis on the landmark decision in Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), the Court’s reasoning undermines Chimel. I would follow Belton, and I therefore respectfully dissent.

I

Although the Court refuses to acknowledge that it is overruling Belton and Thornton, there can be no doubt that it does so.

In Belton, an officer on the New York Thruway removed the occupants from a car and placed them under arrest but did not handcuff them. See 453 U. S., at 456; Brief for Petitioner in New York v. Belton, O. T. 1980, No. 80-328, p. 3. The officer then searched a jacket on the car’s back seat and found drugs. 453 U. S., at 455. By a divided vote, the New York Court of Appeals held that the search of the jacket violated Chimel, in which this Court held that an arresting officer may search the area within an arrestee’s immediate control. See State v. Belton, 50 N. Y. 2d 447, 407 N. E. 2d 420 (1980). The judges of the New York Court of Appeals disagreed on the factual question whether the Belton arrestees could have gained access to the car. The majority thought that they could not have done so, id., at 452, n. 2, 407 N. E. 2d, at 423, n. 2, but the dissent thought that this was a real possibility, id., at 453, 407 N. E. 2d, at 424 (opinion of Gabrielli, J.).

Viewing this disagreement about the application of the Chimel rule as illustrative of a persistent and important problem, the Belton Court concluded that “ ‘[a] single famil-

*357iar standard’ ” was “ ‘essential to guide police officers’ ” who make roadside arrests. 453 U. S., at 458 (quoting Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 213-214 (1979)). The Court acknowledged that articles in the passenger compartment of a car are not always within an arrestee’s reach, but “[i]n order to establish the workable rule this category of cases requires,” the Court adopted a rule that categorically permits the search of a car’s passenger compartment incident to the lawful arrest of an occupant. 453 U. S., at 460.

The precise holding in Belton could not be clearer. The Court stated unequivocally: “[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.” Ibid, (footnote omitted).

Despite this explicit statement, the opinion of the Court in the present case curiously suggests that Belton may reasonably be read as adopting a holding that is narrower than the one explicitly set out in the Belton opinion, namely, that an officer arresting a vehicle occupant may search the passenger compartment “when the passenger compartment is within an arrestee’s reaching distance.” Ante, at 341 (emphasis in original). According to the Court, the broader reading of Belton that has gained wide acceptance “may be attributable to Justice Brennan’s dissent.” Ante, at 341.

Contrary to the Court’s suggestion, however, Justice Brennan’s Belton dissent did not mischaracterize the Court’s holding in that case or cause that holding to be misinterpreted. As noted, the Belton Court explicitly stated precisely what it held. In Thornton, the Court recognized the scope of Belton’s holding. See 541 U. S., at 620. So did Justice Scalia’s separate opinion. See id., at 625 (opinion concurring in judgment) (“In [Belton] we set forth a bright-line rule for arrests of automobile occupants, holding that... a search of the whole [passenger] compartment is justified in every case”). So does Justice Scalia’s opinion in the pres*358ent case. See ante, at 351 (Belton and Thornton held that “arresting officers may always search an arrestee’s vehicle in order to protect themselves from hidden weapons”). This “bright-line rule” has now been interred.

II

Because the Court has substantially overruled Belton and Thornton, the Court must explain why its departure from the usual rule of stare decisis is justified. I recognize that stare decisis is not an “inexorable command,” Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828 (1991), and applies less rigidly in constitutional cases, Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530, 543 (1962) (plurality opinion). But the Court has said that a constitutional precedent should be followed unless there is a “ ‘special justification’ ” for its abandonment. Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 443 (2000). Relevant factors identified in prior cases include whether the precedent has engendered reliance, id., at 442, whether there has been an important change in circumstances in the outside world, Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U. S. 230, 244 (2006) (plurality opinion); Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 412 (1932) (Brandéis, J., dissenting), whether the precedent has proved to be unworkable, Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U. S. 267, 306 (2004) (plurality opinion) (citing Payne, supra, at 827), whether the precedent has been undermined by later decisions, see, e. g., Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 173-174 (1989), and whether the decision was badly reasoned, Vieth, supra, at 306 (plurality opinion). These factors weigh in favor of retaining the rule established in Belton.

A

Reliance. While reliance is most important in “cases involving property and contract rights,” Payne, supra, at 828, the Court has recognized that reliance by law enforcement officers is also entitled to weight. In Dickerson, the Court held that principles of stare decisis “weighted]” heavily *359against overruling Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), because the Miranda rule had become “embedded in routine police practice.” 530 U. S., at 443.

If there was reliance in Dickerson, there certainly is substantial reliance here. The Belton rule has been taught to police officers for more than a quarter century. Many searches — almost certainly including more than a few that figure in cases now on appeal — were conducted in scrupulous reliance on that precedent. It is likely that, on the very day when this opinion is announced, numerous vehicle searches will be conducted in good faith by police officers who were taught the Belton rule.

The opinion of the Court recognizes that “Belton has been widely taught in police academies and that law enforcement officers have relied on the rule in conducting vehicle searches during the past 28 years.” Ante, at 349. But for the Court, this seemingly counts for nothing. The Court states that “[w]e have never relied on stare decisis to justify the continuance of an unconstitutional police practice,” ante, at 348, but of course the Court routinely relies on decisions sustaining the constitutionality of police practices without doing what the Court has done here — sua sponte considering whether those decisions should be overruled. And the Court cites no authority for the proposition that stare decisis may be disregarded or provides only lesser protection when the precedent that is challenged is one that sustained the constitutionality of a law enforcement practice.

The Court also errs in arguing that the reliance interest that was given heavy weight in Dickerson was not “police reliance on a rule requiring them to provide warnings but to the broader societal reliance on that individual right.” Ante, at 350. The Dickerson opinion makes no reference to “societal reliance,” and petitioner in that case contended that there had been reliance on Miranda because, among other things, “[f]or nearly thirty-five years, Miranda’s requirements ha[d] shaped law enforcement training [and] police *360conduct.” See Brief for Petitioner in Dickerson v. United States, O. T. 1999, No. 99-5525, p. 33.

B

Changed circumstances. Abandonment of the Belton rule cannot be justified on the ground that the dangers surrounding the arrest of a vehicle occupant are different today than they were 28 years ago. The Court claims that “[w]e now know that articles inside the passenger compartment are rarely ‘within “the area into which an arrestee might reach,”’” ante, at 350, but surely it was well known in 1981 that a person who is taken from a vehicle, handcuffed, and placed in the back of a patrol car is unlikely to make it back into his own car to retrieve a weapon or destroy evidence.

C

Workability. The Belton rule has not proved to be unworkable. On the contrary, the rule was adopted for the express purpose of providing a test that would be relatively easy for police officers and judges to apply. The Court correctly notes that even the Belton rule is not perfectly clear in all situations. Specifically, it is sometimes debatable whether a search is or is not contemporaneous with an arrest, ante, at 345-346, and n. 6, but that problem is small in comparison with the problems that the Court’s new two-part rule will produce.

The first part of the Court’s new rule — which permits the search of a vehicle’s passenger compartment if it is within an arrestee’s reach at the time of the search — reintroduces the same sort of case-by-case, fact-specific decisionmaking that the Belton rule was adopted to avoid. As the situation in Belton illustrated, there are cases in which it is unclear whether an arrestee could retrieve a weapon or evidence in the passenger compartment of a car.

Even more serious problems will also result from the second part of the Court’s new rule, which requires officers *361making roadside arrests to determine whether there is reason to believe that the vehicle contains evidence of the crime of arrest. What this rule permits in a variety of situations is entirely unclear.

D

Consistency with later cases. The Belton bright-line rule has not been undermined by subsequent cases. On the contrary, that rule was reaffirmed and extended just five years ago in Thornton.

E

Bad reasoning. The Court is harshly critical of Belton’s reasoning, but the problem that the Court perceives cannot be remedied simply by overruling Belton. Belton represented only a modest — and quite defensible — extension of Chimel, as I understand that decision.

Prior to Chimel, the Court’s precedents permitted an arresting officer to search the area within an arrestee’s “possession” and “control” for the purpose of gathering evidence. See 395 U. S., at 759-760. Based on this “abstract doctrine,” id., at 760, n. 4, the Court had sustained searches that extended far beyond an arrestee’s grabbing area. See United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56 (1950) (search of entire office); Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 145 (1947) (search of entire apartment).

The Chimel Court, in an opinion written by Justice Stewart, overruled these cases. Concluding that there are only two justifications for a warrantless search incident to arrest — officer safety and the preservation of evidence — the Court stated that such a search must be confined to “the arrestee’s person” and “the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” 395 U. S., at 762-763.

Unfortunately, Chimel did not say whether “the area from within which [an arrestee] might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence” is to be measured at the time of *362the arrest or at the time of the search, but unless the Chimel rule was meant to be a specialty rule, applicable to only a few unusual cases, the Court must have intended for this area to be measured at the time of arrest.

This is so because the Court can hardly have failed to appreciate the following two facts. First, in the great majority of cases, an officer making an arrest is able to handcuff the arrestee and remove him to a seeure place before conducting a search incident to the arrest. See ante, at 343, n. 4 (stating that it is “the rare case” in which an arresting officer cannot secure an arrestee before conducting a search). Second, because it is safer for an arresting officer to secure an arrestee before searching, it is likely that this is what arresting officers do in the great majority of eases. (And it appears, not surprisingly, that this is in fact the prevailing practice.1) Thus, if the area within an arrestee's reach were assessed, not at the time of arrest, but at the time of the search, the Chimel rule would rarely come into play.

Moreover, if the applicability of the Chimel rule turned on whether an arresting officer chooses to seeure an arrestee prior to conducting a search, rather than searching first and securing the arrestee later, the rule would “create a perverse incentive for an arresting officer to prolong the period during whieh the arrestee is kept in an area where he could pose a danger to the officer.” United States v. Abdul-Saboor, 85 F. 3d 664, 669 (CADC 1996). If this is the law, the D. C. Circuit observed, “the law would truly be, as Mr. Bumble said, ‘a ass.'” Ibid. See also United States v. Tejada, 524 F. 3d 809, 812 (CA7 2008) (“[I]f the police could lawfully have searched the defendant’s grabbing radius at the moment of arrest, he has no legitimate complaint if, the better to protect themselves from him, they first put him outside that radius”).

I do not think that this is what the Chimel Court intended. Handcuffs were in use in 1969. The ability of arresting of*363ficers to secure arrestees before conducting a search — and their incentive to do so — are facts that can hardly have escaped the Court’s attention. I therefore believe that the Chimel Court intended that its new rule apply in cases in which the arrestee is handcuffed before the search is conducted.

The Belton Court, in my view, proceeded on the basis of this interpretation of Chimel. Again speaking through Justice Stewart, the Belton Court reasoned that articles in the passenger compartment of a car are “generally, even if not inevitably,” within an arrestee’s reach. 453 U. S., at 460. This is undoubtedly true at the time of the arrest of a person who is seated in a car but plainly not true when the person has been removed from the car and placed in handcuffs. Accordingly, the Belton Court must have proceeded on the assumption that the Chimel rule was to be applied at the time of arrest. And that is why the Belton Court was able to say that its decision “in no way alter[ed] the fundamental principles established in the Chimel case regarding the basic scope of searches incident to lawful custodial arrests.” 453 U. S., at 460, n. 3. Viewing Chimel as having focused on the time of arrest, Belton’s only new step was to eliminate the need to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a particular person seated in a car actually could have reached the part of the passenger compartment where a weapon or evidence was hidden. For this reason, if we are going to reexamine Belton, we should also reexamine the reasoning in Chimel on which Belton rests.

F

The Court, however, does not reexamine Chimel and thus leaves the law relating to searches incident to arrest in a confused and unstable state. The first part of the Court’s new two-part rule — which permits an arresting officer to search the area within an arrestee’s reach at the time of the search — applies, at least for now, only to vehicle occupants *364and recent occupants, but there is no logical reason why the same rule should not apply to all arrestees.

The second part of the Court’s new rule, which the Court takes uncritically from Justice Scalia’s separate opinion in Thornton, raises doctrinal and practical problems that the Court makes no effort to address. Why, for example, is the standard for this type of evidence-gathering search “reason to believe” rather than probable cause? And why is this type of search restricted to evidence of the offense of arrest? It is true that an arrestee’s vehicle is probably more likely to contain evidence of the crime of arrest than of some other crime, but if reason-to-believe is the governing standard for an evidence-gathering search incident to arrest, it is not easy to see why an officer should not be able to search when the officer has reason to believe that the vehicle in question possesses evidence of a crime other than the crime of arrest.

Nor is it easy to see why an evidence-gathering search incident to arrest should be restricted to the passenger compartment. The Belton rule was limited in this way because the passenger compartment was considered to be the area that vehicle occupants can generally reach, 453 U. S., at 460, but since the second part of the new rule is not based on officer safety or the preservation of evidence, the ground for this limitation is obscure.2

*365III

Respondent in this case has not asked us to overrule Belton, much less Chimel. Respondent’s argument rests entirely on an interpretation of Belton that is plainly incorrect, an interpretation that disregards Belton’s explicit delineation of its holding. I would therefore leave any reexamination of our prior precedents for another day, if such a reexamination is to be undertaken at all. In this case, I would simply apply Belton and reverse the judgment below.

Chief Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.

These two cases raise a common question: whether the police may, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.

I

A

In the first case, petitioner David Riley was stopped by a police officer for driving with expired registration tags. In the course of the stop, the officer also learned that Riley's license had been suspended. The officer impounded Riley's car, pursuant to department policy, and another officer conducted an inventory search of the car. Riley was arrested for possession of concealed and loaded firearms when that search turned up two handguns under the car's hood. See Cal.Penal Code Ann. §§ 12025(a)(1), 12031(a)(1) (West 2009).

An officer searched Riley incident to the arrest and found items associated with the "Bloods" street gang. He also seized a cell phone from Riley's pants pocket. According to Riley's uncontradicted assertion, the phone was a "smart phone," a cell phone with a broad range of other functions based on advanced computing capability, large storage capacity, and Internet connectivity. The officer accessed information on the phone and noticed that some words (presumably in text messages or a contacts list) were preceded by the letters "CK"-a label that, he believed, stood for "Crip Killers," a slang term for members of the Bloods gang.

At the police station about two hours after the arrest, a detective specializing in gangs further examined the contents of the phone. The detective testified that he "went through" Riley's phone "looking for evidence, because ... gang members will *2481often video themselves with guns or take pictures of themselves with the guns." App. in No. 13-132, p. 20. Although there was "a lot of stuff" on the phone, particular files that "caught [the detective's] eye" included videos of young men sparring while someone yelled encouragement using the moniker "Blood." Id., at 11-13. The police also found photographs of Riley standing in front of a car they suspected had been involved in a shooting a few weeks earlier.

Riley was ultimately charged, in connection with that earlier shooting, with firing at an occupied vehicle, assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and attempted murder. The State alleged that Riley had committed those crimes for the benefit of a criminal street gang, an aggravating factor that carries an enhanced sentence. Compare Cal.Penal Code Ann. § 246 (2008) with § 186.22(b)(4)(B) (2014). Prior to trial, Riley moved to suppress all evidence that the police had obtained from his cell phone. He contended that the searches of his phone violated the Fourth Amendment, because they had been performed without a warrant and were not otherwise justified by exigent circumstances. The trial court rejected that argument. App. in No. 13-132, at 24, 26. At Riley's trial, police officers testified about the photographs and videos found on the phone, and some of the photographs were admitted into evidence. Riley was convicted on all three counts and received an enhanced sentence of 15 years to life in prison.

The California Court of Appeal affirmed. No. D059840 (Cal. App., Feb. 8, 2013), App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 13-132, pp. 1a-23a. The court relied on the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Diaz, 51 Cal.4th 84, 119 Cal.Rptr.3d 105, 244 P.3d 501 (2011), which held that the Fourth Amendment permits a warrantless search of cell phone data incident to an arrest, so long as the cell phone was immediately associated with the arrestee's person. See id., at 93, 119 Cal.Rptr.3d 105, 244 P.3d, at 505-506.

The California Supreme Court denied Riley's petition for review, App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 13-132, at 24a, and we granted certiorari, 571 U.S. ----, 132 S.Ct. 94, 181 L.Ed.2d 23 (2014).

B

In the second case, a police officer performing routine surveillance observed respondent Brima Wurie make an apparent drug sale from a car. Officers subsequently arrested Wurie and took him to the police station. At the station, the officers seized two cell phones from Wurie's person. The one at issue here was a "flip phone," a kind of phone that is flipped open for use and that generally has a smaller range of features than a smart phone. Five to ten minutes after arriving at the station, the officers noticed that the phone was repeatedly receiving calls from a source identified as "my house" on the phone's external screen. A few minutes later, they opened the phone and saw a photograph of a woman and a baby set as the phone's wallpaper. They pressed one button on the phone to access its call log, then another button to determine the phone number associated with the "my house" label. They next used an online phone directory to trace that phone number to an apartment building.

When the officers went to the building, they saw Wurie's name on a mailbox and observed through a window a woman who resembled the woman in the photograph on Wurie's phone. They secured the apartment while obtaining a search warrant and, upon later executing the warrant, found and seized 215 grams of crack cocaine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, a firearm and ammunition, and cash.

*2482Wurie was charged with distributing crack cocaine, possessing crack cocaine with intent to distribute, and being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(g); 21 U.S.C. § 841(a). He moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of the apartment, arguing that it was the fruit of an unconstitutional search of his cell phone. The District Court denied the motion. 612 F.Supp.2d 104 (Mass.2009). Wurie was convicted on all three counts and sentenced to 262 months in prison.

A divided panel of the First Circuit reversed the denial of Wurie's motion to suppress and vacated Wurie's convictions for possession with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm as a felon. 728 F.3d 1 (2013). The court held that cell phones are distinct from other physical possessions that may be searched incident to arrest without a warrant, because of the amount of personal data cell phones contain and the negligible threat they pose to law enforcement interests. See id., at 8-11.

We granted certiorari. 571 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 999, 187 L.Ed.2d 848 (2014).

II

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."

As the text makes clear, "the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is 'reasonableness.' " Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006). Our cases have determined that "[w]here a search is undertaken by law enforcement officials to discover evidence of criminal wrongdoing, ... reasonableness generally requires the obtaining of a judicial warrant." Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 653, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995). Such a warrant ensures that the inferences to support a search are "drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948). In the absence of a warrant, a search is reasonable only if it falls within a specific exception to the warrant requirement. See Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 1849, 1856-1857, 179 L.Ed.2d 865 (2011).

The two cases before us concern the reasonableness of a warrantless search incident to a lawful arrest. In 1914, this Court first acknowledged in dictum "the right on the part of the Government, always recognized under English and American law, to search the person of the accused when legally arrested to discover and seize the fruits or evidences of crime." Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 392, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652. Since that time, it has been well accepted that such a search constitutes an exception to the warrant requirement. Indeed, the label "exception" is something of a misnomer in this context, as warrantless searches incident to arrest occur with far greater frequency than searches conducted pursuant to a warrant. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 5.2(b), p. 132, and n. 15 (5th ed. 2012).

Although the existence of the exception for such searches has been recognized for a century, its scope has been debated for nearly as long. See *2483Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 350, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009) (noting the exception's "checkered history"). That debate has focused on the extent to which officers may search property found on or near the arrestee. Three related precedents set forth the rules governing such searches:

The first, Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), laid the groundwork for most of the existing search incident to arrest doctrine. Police officers in that case arrested Chimel inside his home and proceeded to search his entire three-bedroom house, including the attic and garage. In particular rooms, they also looked through the contents of drawers. Id., at 753-754, 89 S.Ct. 2034.

The Court crafted the following rule for assessing the reasonableness of a search incident to arrest:

"When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer's safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee's person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction.... There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee's person and the area 'within his immediate control'-construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence." Id., at 762-763, 89 S.Ct. 2034.

The extensive warrantless search of Chimel's home did not fit within this exception, because it was not needed to protect officer safety or to preserve evidence. Id., at 763, 768, 89 S.Ct. 2034.

Four years later, in United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973), the Court applied the Chimel analysis in the context of a search of the arrestee's person. A police officer had arrested Robinson for driving with a revoked license. The officer conducted a patdown search and felt an object that he could not identify in Robinson's coat pocket. He removed the object, which turned out to be a crumpled cigarette package, and opened it. Inside were 14 capsules of heroin. Id., at 220, 223, 89 S.Ct. 2034.

The Court of Appeals concluded that the search was unreasonable because Robinson was unlikely to have evidence of the crime of arrest on his person, and because it believed that extracting the cigarette package and opening it could not be justified as part of a protective search for weapons. This Court reversed, rejecting the notion that "case-by-case adjudication" was required to determine "whether or not there was present one of the reasons supporting the authority for a search of the person incident to a lawful arrest." Id., at 235, 89 S.Ct. 2034. As the Court explained, "[t]he authority to search the person incident to a lawful custodial arrest, while based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence, does not depend on what a court may later decide was the probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found upon the person of the suspect." Ibid. Instead, a "custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification." Ibid.

The Court thus concluded that the search of Robinson was reasonable even though there was no concern about the loss of evidence, and the arresting officer had no specific concern that Robinson might be armed. Id., at 236, 89 S.Ct. 2034.

*2484In doing so, the Court did not draw a line between a search of Robinson's person and a further examination of the cigarette pack found during that search. It merely noted that, "[h]aving in the course of a lawful search come upon the crumpled package of cigarettes, [the officer] was entitled to inspect it." Ibid. A few years later, the Court clarified that this exception was limited to "personal property ... immediately associated with the person of the arrestee." United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 15, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977) (200-pound, locked footlocker could not be searched incident to arrest), abrogated on other grounds by California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991).

The search incident to arrest trilogy concludes with Gant, which analyzed searches of an arrestee's vehicle. Gant, like Robinson, recognized that the Chimel concerns for officer safety and evidence preservation underlie the search incident to arrest exception. See 556 U.S., at 338, 129 S.Ct. 1710. As a result, the Court concluded that Chimel could authorize police to search a vehicle "only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search." 556 U.S., at 343, 129 S.Ct. 1710.Gant added, however, an independent exception for a warrantless search of a vehicle's passenger compartment "when it is 'reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.' " Ibid. (quoting Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 632, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004) (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment)). That exception stems not from Chimel, the Court explained, but from "circumstances unique to the vehicle context." 556 U.S., at 343, 129 S.Ct. 1710 .

III

These cases require us to decide how the search incident to arrest doctrine applies to modern cell phones, which are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy. A smart phone of the sort taken from Riley was unheard of ten years ago; a significant majority of American adults now own such phones. See A. Smith, Pew Research Center, Smartphone Ownership-2013 Update (June 5, 2013). Even less sophisticated phones like Wurie's, which have already faded in popularity since Wurie was arrested in 2007, have been around for less than 15 years. Both phones are based on technology nearly inconceivable just a few decades ago, when Chimel and Robinson were decided.

Absent more precise guidance from the founding era, we generally determine whether to exempt a given type of search from the warrant requirement "by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests." Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300, 119 S.Ct. 1297, 143 L.Ed.2d 408 (1999). Such a balancing of interests supported the search incident to arrest exception in Robinson, and a mechanical application of Robinson might well support the warrantless searches at issue here.

But while Robinson 's categorical rule strikes the appropriate balance in the context of physical objects, neither of its rationales has much force with respect to digital content on cell phones. On the government interest side, Robinson concluded that the two risks identified in Chimel-harm to officers and destruction of evidence-are present in all custodial *2485arrests. There are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data. In addition, Robinson regarded any privacy interests retained by an individual after arrest as significantly diminished by the fact of the arrest itself. Cell phones, however, place vast quantities of personal information literally in the hands of individuals. A search of the information on a cell phone bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search considered in Robinson.

We therefore decline to extend Robinson to searches of data on cell phones, and hold instead that officers must generally secure a warrant before conducting such a search.

A

We first consider each Chimel concern in turn. In doing so, we do not overlook Robinson 's admonition that searches of a person incident to arrest, "while based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence," are reasonable regardless of "the probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found." 414 U.S., at 235, 94 S.Ct. 467. Rather than requiring the "case-by-case adjudication" that Robinson rejected, ibid., we ask instead whether application of the search incident to arrest doctrine to this particular category of effects would "untether the rule from the justifications underlying the Chimel exception," Gant,supra, at 343, 129 S.Ct. 1710. See also Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 119, 119 S.Ct. 484, 142 L.Ed.2d 492 (1998) (declining to extend Robinson to the issuance of citations, "a situation where the concern for officer safety is not present to the same extent and the concern for destruction or loss of evidence is not present at all").

1

Digital data stored on a cell phone cannot itself be used as a weapon to harm an arresting officer or to effectuate the arrestee's escape. Law enforcement officers remain free to examine the physical aspects of a phone to ensure that it will not be used as a weapon-say, to determine whether there is a razor blade hidden between the phone and its case. Once an officer has secured a phone and eliminated any potential physical threats, however, data on the phone can endanger no one.

Perhaps the same might have been said of the cigarette pack seized from Robinson's pocket. Once an officer gained control of the pack, it was unlikely that Robinson could have accessed the pack's contents. But unknown physical objects may always pose risks, no matter how slight, during the tense atmosphere of a custodial arrest. The officer in Robinson testified that he could not identify the objects in the cigarette pack but knew they were not cigarettes. See 414 U.S., at 223, 236, n. 7, 94 S.Ct. 467. Given that, a further search was a reasonable protective measure. No such unknowns exist with respect to digital data. As the First Circuit explained, the officers who searched Wurie's cell phone "knew exactly what they would find therein: data. They also knew that the data could not harm them." 728 F.3d, at 10.

The United States and California both suggest that a search of cell phone data might help ensure officer safety in more indirect ways, for example by alerting officers that confederates of the arrestee are headed to the scene. There is undoubtedly a strong government interest in warning officers about such possibilities, but neither the United States nor California offers evidence to suggest that their concerns are based on actual experience. The *2486proposed consideration would also represent a broadening of Chimel 's concern that an arrestee himself might grab a weapon and use it against an officer "to resist arrest or effect his escape." 395 U.S., at 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034. And any such threats from outside the arrest scene do not "lurk[ ] in all custodial arrests." Chadwick, 433 U.S., at 14-15, 97 S.Ct. 2476. Accordingly, the interest in protecting officer safety does not justify dispensing with the warrant requirement across the board. To the extent dangers to arresting officers may be implicated in a particular way in a particular case, they are better addressed through consideration of case-specific exceptions to the warrant requirement, such as the one for exigent circumstances. See, e.g., Warden, Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 298-299, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967) ("The Fourth Amendment does not require police officers to delay in the course of an investigation if to do so would gravely endanger their lives or the lives of others.").

2

The United States and California focus primarily on the second Chimel rationale: preventing the destruction of evidence.

Both Riley and Wurie concede that officers could have seized and secured their cell phones to prevent destruction of evidence while seeking a warrant. See Brief for Petitioner in No. 13-132, p. 20; Brief for Respondent in No. 13-212, p. 41. That is a sensible concession. See Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U.S. 326, 331-333, 121 S.Ct. 946, 148 L.Ed.2d 838 (2001); Chadwick, supra, at 13, and n. 8, 97 S.Ct. 2476. And once law enforcement officers have secured a cell phone, there is no longer any risk that the arrestee himself will be able to delete incriminating data from the phone.

The United States and California argue that information on a cell phone may nevertheless be vulnerable to two types of evidence destruction unique to digital data-remote wiping and data encryption. Remote wiping occurs when a phone, connected to a wireless network, receives a signal that erases stored data. This can happen when a third party sends a remote signal or when a phone is preprogrammed to delete data upon entering or leaving certain geographic areas (so-called "geofencing"). See Dept. of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, R. Ayers, S. Brothers, & W. Jansen, Guidelines on Mobile Device Forensics (Draft) 29, 31 (SP 800-101 Rev. 1, Sept. 2013) (hereinafter Ayers). Encryption is a security feature that some modern cell phones use in addition to password protection. When such phones lock, data becomes protected by sophisticated encryption that renders a phone all but "unbreakable" unless police know the password. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in No. 13-132, p. 11.

As an initial matter, these broader concerns about the loss of evidence are distinct from Chimel 's focus on a defendant who responds to arrest by trying to conceal or destroy evidence within his reach. See 395 U.S., at 763-764, 89 S.Ct. 2034. With respect to remote wiping, the Government's primary concern turns on the actions of third parties who are not present at the scene of arrest. And data encryption is even further afield. There, the Government focuses on the ordinary operation of a phone's security features, apart from any active attempt by a defendant or his associates to conceal or destroy evidence upon arrest.

We have also been given little reason to believe that either problem is prevalent. The briefing reveals only a couple of anecdotal examples of remote wiping triggered by an arrest. See Brief for Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies et *2487al. as Amici Curiae in No. 13-132, pp. 9-10; see also Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 13-132, p. 48. Similarly, the opportunities for officers to search a password-protected phone before data becomes encrypted are quite limited. Law enforcement officers are very unlikely to come upon such a phone in an unlocked state because most phones lock at the touch of a button or, as a default, after some very short period of inactivity. See, e.g., iPhone User Guide for iOS 7.1 Software 10 (2014) (default lock after about one minute). This may explain why the encryption argument was not made until the merits stage in this Court, and has never been considered by the Courts of Appeals.

Moreover, in situations in which an arrest might trigger a remote-wipe attempt or an officer discovers an unlocked phone, it is not clear that the ability to conduct a warrantless search would make much of a difference. The need to effect the arrest, secure the scene, and tend to other pressing matters means that law enforcement officers may well not be able to turn their attention to a cell phone right away. See Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 13-132, at 50; see also Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in No. 13-132, at 19. Cell phone data would be vulnerable to remote wiping from the time an individual anticipates arrest to the time any eventual search of the phone is completed, which might be at the station house hours later. Likewise, an officer who seizes a phone in an unlocked state might not be able to begin his search in the short time remaining before the phone locks and data becomes encrypted.

In any event, as to remote wiping, law enforcement is not without specific means to address the threat. Remote wiping can be fully prevented by disconnecting a phone from the network. There are at least two simple ways to do this: First, law enforcement officers can turn the phone off or remove its battery. Second, if they are concerned about encryption or other potential problems, they can leave a phone powered on and place it in an enclosure that isolates the phone from radio waves. See Ayers 30-31. Such devices are commonly called "Faraday bags," after the English scientist Michael Faraday. They are essentially sandwich bags made of aluminum foil: cheap, lightweight, and easy to use. See Brief for Criminal Law Professors as Amici Curiae 9. They may not be a complete answer to the problem, see Ayers 32, but at least for now they provide a reasonable response. In fact, a number of law enforcement agencies around the country already encourage the use of Faraday bags. See, e.g., Dept. of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Electronic Crime Scene Investigation: A Guide for First Responders 14, 32 (2d ed. Apr. 2008); Brief for Criminal Law Professors as Amici Curiae 4-6.

To the extent that law enforcement still has specific concerns about the potential loss of evidence in a particular case, there remain more targeted ways to address those concerns. If "the police are truly confronted with a 'now or never' situation,"-for example, circumstances suggesting that a defendant's phone will be the target of an imminent remote-wipe attempt-they may be able to rely on exigent circumstances to search the phone immediately. Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. ----, ----, 133 S.Ct. 1552, 1561-1562, 185 L.Ed.2d 696 (2013) (quoting Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U.S. 496, 505, 93 S.Ct. 2796, 37 L.Ed.2d 757 (1973); some internal quotation marks omitted). Or, if officers happen to seize a phone in an unlocked state, they may be able to disable a phone's automatic-lock feature in order to prevent the phone from locking and encrypting data. See App. to Reply Brief in No. 13-132, p. 3a (diagramming the few necessary steps). Such a preventive measure could *2488be analyzed under the principles set forth in our decision in McArthur, 531 U.S. 326, 121 S.Ct. 946, which approved officers' reasonable steps to secure a scene to preserve evidence while they awaited a warrant. See id., at 331-333, 121 S.Ct. 946.

B

The search incident to arrest exception rests not only on the heightened government interests at stake in a volatile arrest situation, but also on an arrestee's reduced privacy interests upon being taken into police custody. Robinson focused primarily on the first of those rationales. But it also quoted with approval then-Judge Cardozo's account of the historical basis for the search incident to arrest exception: "Search of the person becomes lawful when grounds for arrest and accusation have been discovered, and the law is in the act of subjecting the body of the accused to its physical dominion." 414 U.S., at 232, 94 S.Ct. 467 (quoting People v. Chiagles, 237 N.Y. 193, 197, 142 N.E. 583, 584 (1923)); see also 414 U.S., at 237, 94 S.Ct. 467 (Powell, J., concurring) ("an individual lawfully subjected to a custodial arrest retains no significant Fourth Amendment interest in the privacy of his person"). Put simply, a patdown of Robinson's clothing and an inspection of the cigarette pack found in his pocket constituted only minor additional intrusions compared to the substantial government authority exercised in taking Robinson into custody. See Chadwick, 433 U.S., at 16, n. 10, 97 S.Ct. 2476 (searches of a person are justified in part by "reduced expectations of privacy caused by the arrest").

The fact that an arrestee has diminished privacy interests does not mean that the Fourth Amendment falls out of the picture entirely. Not every search "is acceptable solely because a person is in custody." Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. ----, ----, 133 S.Ct. 1958, 1979, 186 L.Ed.2d 1 (2013). To the contrary, when "privacy-related concerns are weighty enough" a "search may require a warrant, notwithstanding the diminished expectations of privacy of the arrestee." Ibid. One such example, of course, is Chimel.Chimel refused to "characteriz[e] the invasion of privacy that results from a top-to-bottom search of a man's house as 'minor.' " 395 U.S., at 766-767, n. 12, 89 S.Ct. 2034. Because a search of the arrestee's entire house was a substantial invasion beyond the arrest itself, the Court concluded that a warrant was required.

Robinson is the only decision from this Court applying Chimel to a search of the contents of an item found on an arrestee's person. In an earlier case, this Court had approved a search of a zipper bag carried by an arrestee, but the Court analyzed only the validity of the arrest itself. See Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 310-311, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959). Lower courts applying Robinson and Chimel, however, have approved searches of a variety of personal items carried by an arrestee. See, e.g., United States v. Carrion, 809 F.2d 1120, 1123, 1128 (C.A.5 1987) (billfold and address book); United States v. Watson, 669 F.2d 1374, 1383-1384 (C.A.11 1982) (wallet); United States v. Lee, 501 F.2d 890, 892 (C.A.D.C.1974) (purse).

The United States asserts that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is "materially indistinguishable" from searches of these sorts of physical items. Brief for United States in No. 13-212, p. 26. That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon. Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together. Modern cell phones, as a category, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those *2489implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse. A conclusion that inspecting the contents of an arrestee's pockets works no substantial additional intrusion on privacy beyond the arrest itself may make sense as applied to physical items, but any extension of that reasoning to digital data has to rest on its own bottom.

1

Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept on an arrestee's person. The term "cell phone" is itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone. They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers.

One of the most notable distinguishing features of modern cell phones is their immense storage capacity. Before cell phones, a search of a person was limited by physical realities and tended as a general matter to constitute only a narrow intrusion on privacy. See Kerr, Foreword: Accounting for Technological Change, 36 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 403, 404-405 (2013). Most people cannot lug around every piece of mail they have received for the past several months, every picture they have taken, or every book or article they have read-nor would they have any reason to attempt to do so. And if they did, they would have to drag behind them a trunk of the sort held to require a search warrant in Chadwick,supra, rather than a container the size of the cigarette package in Robinson.

But the possible intrusion on privacy is not physically limited in the same way when it comes to cell phones. The current top-selling smart phone has a standard capacity of 16 gigabytes (and is available with up to 64 gigabytes). Sixteen gigabytes translates to millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos. See Kerr, supra, at 404; Brief for Center for Democracy & Technology et al. as Amici Curiae 7-8. Cell phones couple that capacity with the ability to store many different types of information: Even the most basic phones that sell for less than $20 might hold photographs, picture messages, text messages, Internet browsing history, a calendar, a thousand-entry phone book, and so on. See id., at 30; United States v. Flores-Lopez, 670 F.3d 803, 806 (C.A.7 2012). We expect that the gulf between physical practicability and digital capacity will only continue to widen in the future.

The storage capacity of cell phones has several interrelated consequences for privacy. First, a cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information-an address, a note, a prescription, a bank statement, a video-that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record. Second, a cell phone's capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. The sum of an individual's private life can be reconstructed through a thousand photographs labeled with dates, locations, and descriptions; the same cannot be said of a photograph or two of loved ones tucked into a wallet. Third, the data on a phone can date back to the purchase of the phone, or even earlier. A person might carry in his pocket a slip of paper reminding him to call Mr. Jones; he would not carry a record of all his communications with Mr. Jones for the past several months, as would routinely be kept on a phone.¹

*2490Finally, there is an element of pervasiveness that characterizes cell phones but not physical records. Prior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day. Now it is the person who is not carrying a cell phone, with all that it contains, who is the exception. According to one poll, nearly three-quarters of smart phone users report being within five feet of their phones most of the time, with 12% admitting that they even use their phones in the shower. See Harris Interactive, 2013 Mobile Consumer Habits Study (June 2013). A decade ago police officers searching an arrestee might have occasionally stumbled across a highly personal item such as a diary. See, e.g., United States v. Frankenberry, 387 F.2d 337 (C.A.2 1967) ( per curiam ). But those discoveries were likely to be few and far between. Today, by contrast, it is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than 90% of American adults who own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives-from the mundane to the intimate. See Ontario v. Quon, 560 U.S. 746, 760, 130 S.Ct. 2619, 177 L.Ed.2d 216 (2010). Allowing the police to scrutinize such records on a routine basis is quite different from allowing them to search a personal item or two in the occasional case.

Although the data stored on a cell phone is distinguished from physical records by quantity alone, certain types of data are also qualitatively different. An Internet search and browsing history, for example, can be found on an Internet-enabled phone and could reveal an individual's private interests or concerns-perhaps a search for certain symptoms of disease, coupled with frequent visits to WebMD. Data on a cell phone can also reveal where a person has been. Historic location information is a standard feature on many smart phones and can reconstruct someone's specific movements down to the minute, not only around town but also within a particular building. See United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 945, 955, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012) (SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring) ("GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person's public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.").

Mobile application software on a cell phone, or "apps," offer a range of tools for managing detailed information about all aspects of a person's life. There are apps for Democratic Party news and Republican Party news; apps for alcohol, drug, and gambling addictions; apps for sharing prayer requests; apps for tracking pregnancy symptoms; apps for planning your budget; apps for every conceivable hobby or pastime; apps for improving your romantic life. There are popular apps for buying or selling just about anything, and the records of such transactions may be accessible on the phone indefinitely. There are over a million apps available in each of the two major app stores; the phrase "there's an app for that" is now part of the popular lexicon. The average smart phone user has installed 33 apps, which together can form a revealing montage of the user's life. See Brief for Electronic Privacy Information Center as Amicus Curiae in No. 13-132, p. 9.

In 1926, Learned Hand observed (in an opinion later quoted in Chimel ) that it is "a totally different thing to search a man's *2491pockets and use against him what they contain, from ransacking his house for everything which may incriminate him." United States v. Kirschenblatt, 16 F.2d 202, 203 (C.A.2). If his pockets contain a cell phone, however, that is no longer true. Indeed, a cell phone search would typically expose to the government far more than the most exhaustive search of a house: A phone not only contains in digital form many sensitive records previously found in the home; it also contains a broad array of private information never found in a home in any form-unless the phone is.

2

To further complicate the scope of the privacy interests at stake, the data a user views on many modern cell phones may not in fact be stored on the device itself. Treating a cell phone as a container whose contents may be searched incident to an arrest is a bit strained as an initial matter. See New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460, n. 4, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981) (describing a "container" as "any object capable of holding another object"). But the analogy crumbles entirely when a cell phone is used to access data located elsewhere, at the tap of a screen. That is what cell phones, with increasing frequency, are designed to do by taking advantage of "cloud computing." Cloud computing is the capacity of Internet-connected devices to display data stored on remote servers rather than on the device itself. Cell phone users often may not know whether particular information is stored on the device or in the cloud, and it generally makes little difference. See Brief for Electronic Privacy Information Center in No. 13-132, at 12-14, 20. Moreover, the same type of data may be stored locally on the device for one user and in the cloud for another.

The United States concedes that the search incident to arrest exception may not be stretched to cover a search of files accessed remotely-that is, a search of files stored in the cloud. See Brief for United States in No. 13-212, at 43-44. Such a search would be like finding a key in a suspect's pocket and arguing that it allowed law enforcement to unlock and search a house. But officers searching a phone's data would not typically know whether the information they are viewing was stored locally at the time of the arrest or has been pulled from the cloud.

Although the Government recognizes the problem, its proposed solutions are unclear. It suggests that officers could disconnect a phone from the network before searching the device-the very solution whose feasibility it contested with respect to the threat of remote wiping. Compare Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 13-132, at 50-51, with Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 13-212, pp. 13-14. Alternatively, the Government proposes that law enforcement agencies "develop protocols to address" concerns raised by cloud computing. Reply Brief in No. 13-212, pp. 14-15. Probably a good idea, but the Founders did not fight a revolution to gain the right to government agency protocols. The possibility that a search might extend well beyond papers and effects in the physical proximity of an arrestee is yet another reason that the privacy interests here dwarf those in Robinson.

C

Apart from their arguments for a direct extension of Robinson, the United States and California offer various fallback options for permitting warrantless cell phone searches under certain circumstances. Each of the proposals is flawed and contravenes our general preference to provide clear guidance to law enforcement through categorical rules. "[I]f police are to have workable rules, the balancing of the competing interests ... 'must in large part be *2492done on a categorical basis-not in an ad hoc, case-by-case fashion by individual police officers.' " Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 705, n. 19, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 (1981) (quoting Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 219-220, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979) (White, J., concurring)).

The United States first proposes that the Gant standard be imported from the vehicle context, allowing a warrantless search of an arrestee's cell phone whenever it is reasonable to believe that the phone contains evidence of the crime of arrest. But Gant relied on "circumstances unique to the vehicle context" to endorse a search solely for the purpose of gathering evidence. 556 U.S., at 343, 129 S.Ct. 1710. Justice SCALIA's Thornton opinion, on which Gant was based, explained that those unique circumstances are "a reduced expectation of privacy" and "heightened law enforcement needs" when it comes to motor vehicles. 541 U.S., at 631, 124 S.Ct. 2127; see also Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S., at 303-304, 119 S.Ct. 1297. For reasons that we have explained, cell phone searches bear neither of those characteristics.

At any rate, a Gant standard would prove no practical limit at all when it comes to cell phone searches. In the vehicle context, Gant generally protects against searches for evidence of past crimes. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 7.1(d), at 709, and n. 191. In the cell phone context, however, it is reasonable to expect that incriminating information will be found on a phone regardless of when the crime occurred. Similarly, in the vehicle context Gant restricts broad searches resulting from minor crimes such as traffic violations. See id., § 7.1(d), at 713, and n. 204. That would not necessarily be true for cell phones. It would be a particularly inexperienced or unimaginative law enforcement officer who could not come up with several reasons to suppose evidence of just about any crime could be found on a cell phone. Even an individual pulled over for something as basic as speeding might well have locational data dispositive of guilt on his phone. An individual pulled over for reckless driving might have evidence on the phone that shows whether he was texting while driving. The sources of potential pertinent information are virtually unlimited, so applying the Gant standard to cell phones would in effect give "police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person's private effects." 556 U.S., at 345, 129 S.Ct. 1710.

The United States also proposes a rule that would restrict the scope of a cell phone search to those areas of the phone where an officer reasonably believes that information relevant to the crime, the arrestee's identity, or officer safety will be discovered. See Brief for United States in No. 13-212, at 51-53. This approach would again impose few meaningful constraints on officers. The proposed categories would sweep in a great deal of information, and officers would not always be able to discern in advance what information would be found where.

We also reject the United States' final suggestion that officers should always be able to search a phone's call log, as they did in Wurie's case. The Government relies on Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979), which held that no warrant was required to use a pen register at telephone company premises to identify numbers dialed by a particular caller. The Court in that case, however, concluded that the use of a pen register was not a "search" at all under the Fourth Amendment. See id., at 745-746, 99 S.Ct. 2577. There is no dispute here that the officers engaged in a search of Wurie's cell *2493phone. Moreover, call logs typically contain more than just phone numbers; they include any identifying information that an individual might add, such as the label "my house" in Wurie's case.

Finally, at oral argument California suggested a different limiting principle, under which officers could search cell phone data if they could have obtained the same information from a pre-digital counterpart. See Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 13-132, at 38-43; see also Flores-Lopez, 670 F.3d, at 807 ("If police are entitled to open a pocket diary to copy the owner's address, they should be entitled to turn on a cell phone to learn its number."). But the fact that a search in the pre-digital era could have turned up a photograph or two in a wallet does not justify a search of thousands of photos in a digital gallery. The fact that someone could have tucked a paper bank statement in a pocket does not justify a search of every bank statement from the last five years. And to make matters worse, such an analogue test would allow law enforcement to search a range of items contained on a phone, even though people would be unlikely to carry such a variety of information in physical form. In Riley's case, for example, it is implausible that he would have strolled around with video tapes, photo albums, and an address book all crammed into his pockets. But because each of those items has a pre-digital analogue, police under California's proposal would be able to search a phone for all of those items-a significant diminution of privacy.

In addition, an analogue test would launch courts on a difficult line-drawing expedition to determine which digital files are comparable to physical records. Is an e-mail equivalent to a letter? Is a voicemail equivalent to a phone message slip? It is not clear how officers could make these kinds of decisions before conducting a search, or how courts would apply the proposed rule after the fact. An analogue test would "keep defendants and judges guessing for years to come." Sykes v. United States, 564 U.S. 1, ----, 131 S.Ct. 2267, 2287, 180 L.Ed.2d 60 (2011) (SCALIA, J., dissenting) (discussing the Court's analogue test under the Armed Career Criminal Act).

IV

We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime. Cell phones have become important tools in facilitating coordination and communication among members of criminal enterprises, and can provide valuable incriminating information about dangerous criminals. Privacy comes at a cost.

Our holding, of course, is not that the information on a cell phone is immune from search; it is instead that a warrant is generally required before such a search, even when a cell phone is seized incident to arrest. Our cases have historically recognized that the warrant requirement is "an important working part of our machinery of government," not merely "an inconvenience to be somehow 'weighed' against the claims of police efficiency." Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 481, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971). Recent technological advances similar to those discussed here have, in addition, made the process of obtaining a warrant itself more efficient. See McNeely, 569 U.S., at ----, 133 S.Ct., at 1561-1563; id., at ----, 133 S.Ct., at 1573 (ROBERTS, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (describing jurisdiction where "police officers can e-mail warrant requests to judges' iPads [and] judges have signed such warrants and e-mailed them back to officers in less than 15 minutes").

*2494Moreover, even though the search incident to arrest exception does not apply to cell phones, other case-specific exceptions may still justify a warrantless search of a particular phone. "One well-recognized exception applies when ' "the exigencies of the situation" make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a] warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.' " Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1856 (quoting Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 394, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978)). Such exigencies could include the need to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence in individual cases, to pursue a fleeing suspect, and to assist persons who are seriously injured or are threatened with imminent injury. 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct. 1849. In Chadwick, for example, the Court held that the exception for searches incident to arrest did not justify a search of the trunk at issue, but noted that "if officers have reason to believe that luggage contains some immediately dangerous instrumentality, such as explosives, it would be foolhardy to transport it to the station house without opening the luggage." 433 U.S., at 15, n. 9, 97 S.Ct. 2476.

In light of the availability of the exigent circumstances exception, there is no reason to believe that law enforcement officers will not be able to address some of the more extreme hypotheticals that have been suggested: a suspect texting an accomplice who, it is feared, is preparing to detonate a bomb, or a child abductor who may have information about the child's location on his cell phone. The defendants here recognize-indeed, they stress-that such fact-specific threats may justify a warrantless search of cell phone data. See Reply Brief in No. 13-132, at 8-9; Brief for Respondent in No. 13-212, at 30, 41. The critical point is that, unlike the search incident to arrest exception, the exigent circumstances exception requires a court to examine whether an emergency justified a warrantless search in each particular case. See McNeely, supra, at ----, 133 S.Ct., at 1559.²

Our cases have recognized that the Fourth Amendment was the founding generation's response to the reviled "general warrants" and "writs of assistance" of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity. Opposition to such searches was in fact one of the driving forces behind the Revolution itself. In 1761, the patriot James Otis delivered a speech in Boston denouncing the use of writs of assistance. A young John Adams was there, and he would later write that "[e]very man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance." 10 Works of John Adams 247-248 (C. Adams ed. 1856). According to Adams, Otis's speech was "the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born." Id., at 248 (quoted in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 625, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886)).

Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold *2495for many Americans "the privacies of life," Boyd, supra, at 630, 6 S.Ct. 524. The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple-get a warrant.

We reverse the judgment of the California Court of Appeal in No. 13-132 and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. We affirm the judgment of the First Circuit in No. 13-212.

It is so ordered.

Justice ALITO, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I agree with the Court that law enforcement officers, in conducting a lawful search incident to arrest, must generally obtain a warrant before searching information stored or accessible on a cell phone. I write separately to address two points.

I

A

First, I am not convinced at this time that the ancient rule on searches incident to arrest is based exclusively (or even primarily) on the need to protect the safety of arresting officers and the need to prevent the destruction of evidence. Cf. ante, at 2484. This rule antedates the adoption of the Fourth Amendment by at least a century. See T. Clancy, The Fourth Amendment: Its History and Interpretation 340 (2008); T. Taylor, Two Studies in Constitutional Interpretation 28 (1969); Amar, Fourth Amendment First Principles, 107 Harv. L. Rev. 757, 764 (1994). In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 392, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914), we held that the Fourth Amendment did not disturb this rule. See also Taylor, supra, at 45; Stuntz, The Substantive Origins of Criminal Procedure, 105 Yale L.J. 393, 401 (1995) ("The power to search incident to arrest-a search of the arrested suspect's person ...-was well established in the mid-eighteenth century, and nothing in ... the Fourth Amendment changed that"). And neither in Weeks nor in any of the authorities discussing the old common-law rule have I found any suggestion that it was based exclusively or primarily on the need to protect arresting officers or to prevent the destruction of evidence.

On the contrary, when pre-Weeks authorities discussed the basis for the rule, what was mentioned was the need to obtain probative evidence. For example, an 1839 case stated that "it is clear, and beyond doubt, that ... constables ... are entitled, upon a lawful arrest by them of one charged with treason or felony, to take and detain property found in his possession which will form material evidence in his prosecution for that crime." See Dillon v. O'Brien, 16 Cox Crim. Cas. 245, 249-251 (1887) (citing Regina, v. Frost, 9 Car. & P. 129, 173 Eng. Rep. 771). The court noted that the origins of that rule "deriv[e] from the interest which the State has in a person guilty (or reasonably believed to be guilty) of a crime being brought to justice, and in a prosecution, once commenced, being determined in due course of law." 16 Cox Crim. Cas., at 249-250. See also Holker v. Hennessey, 141 Mo. 527, 537-540, 42 S.W. 1090, 1093 (1897).

Two 19th-century treatises that this Court has previously cited in connection with the origin of the search-incident-to-arrest rule, see Weeks, supra, at 392, 34 S.Ct. 341, suggest the same rationale. See F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 60, p. 45 (8th ed. 1880) ("Those *2496arresting a defendant are bound to take from his person any articles which may be of use as proof in the trial of the offense with which the defendant is charged"); J. Bishop, Criminal Procedure §§ 210-212, p. 127 (2d ed. 1872) (if an arresting officer finds "about the prisoner's person, or otherwise in his possession, either goods or moneys which there is reason to believe are connected with the supposed crime as its fruits, or as the instruments with which it was committed, or as directly furnishing evidence relating to the transaction, he may take the same, and hold them to be disposed of as the court may direct").

What ultimately convinces me that the rule is not closely linked to the need for officer safety and evidence preservation is that these rationales fail to explain the rule's well-recognized scope. It has long been accepted that written items found on the person of an arrestee may be examined and used at trial.^* But once these items are taken away from an arrestee (something that obviously must be done before the items are read), there is no risk that the arrestee will destroy them. Nor is there any risk that leaving these items unread will endanger the arresting officers.

The idea that officer safety and the preservation of evidence are the sole reasons for allowing a warrantless search incident to arrest appears to derive from the Court's reasoning in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), a case that involved the lawfulness of a search of the scene of an arrest, not the person of an arrestee. As I have explained, Chimel 's reasoning is questionable, see Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 361-363, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009) (ALITO, J., dissenting), and I think it is a mistake to allow that reasoning to affect cases like these that concern the search of the person of arrestees.

B

Despite my view on the point discussed above, I agree that we should not mechanically apply the rule used in the predigital era to the search of a cell phone. Many cell phones now in use are capable of storing and accessing a quantity of information, some highly personal, that no person would ever have had on his person in hard-copy form. This calls for a new balancing *2497of law enforcement and privacy interests.

The Court strikes this balance in favor of privacy interests with respect to all cell phones and all information found in them, and this approach leads to anomalies. For example, the Court's broad holding favors information in digital form over information in hard-copy form. Suppose that two suspects are arrested. Suspect number one has in his pocket a monthly bill for his land-line phone, and the bill lists an incriminating call to a long-distance number. He also has in his a wallet a few snapshots, and one of these is incriminating. Suspect number two has in his pocket a cell phone, the call log of which shows a call to the same incriminating number. In addition, a number of photos are stored in the memory of the cell phone, and one of these is incriminating. Under established law, the police may seize and examine the phone bill and the snapshots in the wallet without obtaining a warrant, but under the Court's holding today, the information stored in the cell phone is out.

While the Court's approach leads to anomalies, I do not see a workable alternative. Law enforcement officers need clear rules regarding searches incident to arrest, and it would take many cases and many years for the courts to develop more nuanced rules. And during that time, the nature of the electronic devices that ordinary Americans carry on their persons would continue to change.

II

This brings me to my second point. While I agree with the holding of the Court, I would reconsider the question presented here if either Congress or state legislatures, after assessing the legitimate needs of law enforcement and the privacy interests of cell phone owners, enact legislation that draws reasonable distinctions based on categories of information or perhaps other variables.

The regulation of electronic surveillance provides an instructive example. After this Court held that electronic surveillance constitutes a search even when no property interest is invaded, see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 353-359, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), Congress responded by enacting Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 82 Stat. 211. See also 18 U.S.C. § 2510 et seq. Since that time, electronic surveillance has been governed primarily, not by decisions of this Court, but by the statute, which authorizes but imposes detailed restrictions on electronic surveillance. See ibid.

Modern cell phones are of great value for both lawful and unlawful purposes. They can be used in committing many serious crimes, and they present new and difficult law enforcement problems. See Brief for United States in No. 13-212, pp. 2-3. At the same time, because of the role that these devices have come to play in contemporary life, searching their contents implicates very sensitive privacy interests that this Court is poorly positioned to understand and evaluate. Many forms of modern technology are making it easier and easier for both government and private entities to amass a wealth of information about the lives of ordinary Americans, and at the same time, many ordinary Americans are choosing to make public much information that was seldom revealed to outsiders just a few decades ago.

In light of these developments, it would be very unfortunate if privacy protection in the 21st century were left primarily to the federal courts using the blunt instrument of the Fourth Amendment. Legislatures, elected by the people, are in a better position than we are to assess and respond to the changes that have already occurred *2498and those that almost certainly will take place in the future.

Chief Justice Burger

delivered the opinion of the Court.

We granted certiorari to decide whether law enforcement agents violated the Fourth Amendment when they conducted a warrantless search, based on probable cause, of a fully mobile “motor home” located in a public place.

H-I

On May 31, 1979, Drug Enforcement Agency Agent Robert Williams watched respondent, Charles Carney, ap*388proach a youth in downtown San Diego. The youth accompanied Carney to a Dodge Mini Motor Home parked in a nearby lot. Carney and the youth closed the window shades in the motor home, including one across the front window. Agent Williams had previously received uncorroborated information that the same motor home was used by another person who was exchanging marihuana for sex. Williams, with assistance from other agents, kept the motor home under surveillance for the entire one and one-quarter hours that Carney and the youth remained inside. When the youth left the motor home, the agents followed and stopped him. The youth told the agents that he had received marihuana in return for allowing Carney sexual contacts.

At the agents’ request, the youth returned to the motor home and knocked on its door; Carney stepped out. The agents identified themselves as law enforcement officers. Without a warrant or consent, one agent entered the motor home and observed marihuana, plastic bags, and a scale of the kind used in weighing drugs on a table. Agent Williams took Carney into custody and took possession of the motor home. A subsequent search of the motor home at the police station revealed additional marihuana in the cupboards and refrigerator.

Respondent was charged with possession of marihuana for sale. At a preliminary hearing, he moved to suppress the evidence discovered in the motor home. The Magistrate denied the motion, upholding the initial search as a justifiable search for other persons, and the subsequent search as a routine inventory search.

Respondent renewed his suppression motion in the Superior Court. The Superior Court also rejected the claim, holding that there was probable cause to arrest respondent, that the search of the motor home was authorized under the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, and that the motor home itself could be seized without a warrant as an instrumentality of the crime. Re*389spondent then pleaded nolo contendere to the charges against him, and was placed on probation for three years.

Respondent appealed from the order placing him on probation. The California Court of Appeal affirmed, reasoning that the vehicle exception applied to respondent’s motor home. 117 Cal. App. 3d 36, 172 Cal. Rptr. 430 (1981).

The California Supreme Court reversed the conviction. 34 Cal. 3d 597, 668 P. 2d 807 (1983). The Supreme Court did not disagree with the conclusion of the trial court that the agents had probable cause to arrest respondent and to believe that the vehicle contained evidence of a crime; however, the court held that the search was unreasonable because no warrant was obtained, rejecting the State’s argument that the vehicle exception to the warrant requirement should apply.1 That court reached its decision by concluding that the mobility of a vehicle “is no longer the prime justification for the automobile exception; rather, ‘the answer lies in the diminished expectation of privacy which surrounds the automobile.’” Id., at 605, 668 P. 2d, at 811. The California Supreme Court held that the expectations of privacy in a motor home are more like those in a dwelling than in an automobile because the primary function of motor homes is not to provide transportation but to “provide the occupant with living quarters.” Id., at 606, 668 P. 2d, at 812.

We granted certiorari, 465 U. S. 1098 (1984). We reverse.

*3901 — 1 I — I

The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” This fundamental right is preserved by a requirement that searches be conducted pursuant to a warrant issued by an independent judicial officer. There are, of course, exceptions to the general rule that a warrant must be secured before a search is undertaken; one is the so-called “automobile exception” at issue in this case. This exception to the warrant requirement was first set forth by the Court 60 years ago in Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925). There, the Court recognized that the privacy interests in an automobile are constitutionally protected; however, it held that the ready mobility of the automobile justifies a lesser degree of protection of those interests. The Court rested this exception on a long-recognized distinction between stationary structures and vehicles:

“[T]he guaranty of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures by the Fourth Amendment has been construed, practically since the beginning of Government, as recognizing 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.” Id., at 153 (emphasis added).

The capacity to be “quickly moved” was clearly the basis of the holding in Carroll, and our cases have consistently recognized ready mobility as one of the principal bases of the automobile exception. See, e. g., Cooper v. California, 386 U. S. 58, 59 (1967); Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, 52 (1970); Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433, 442 (1973); *391 Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U. S. 583, 588 (1974); South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 367 (1976). In Chambers, for example, commenting on the rationale for the vehicle exception, we noted that “the opportunity to search is fleeting since a car is readily movable.” 399 U. S., at 51. More recently, in United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 806 (1982), we once again emphasized that “an immediate intrusion is necessary” because of “the nature of an automobile in transit. . . .” The mobility of automobiles, we have observed, “creates circumstances of such exigency that, as a practical necessity, rigorous enforcement of the warrant requirement is impossible.” South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, at 367.

However, although ready mobility alone was perhaps the original justification for the vehicle exception, our later cases have made clear that ready mobility is not the only basis for the exception. The reasons for the vehicle exception, we have said, are twofold. 428 U. S., at 367. “Besides the element of mobility, less rigorous warrant requirements govern because the expectation of privacy with respect to one’s automobile is significantly less than that relating to one’s home or office.” Ibid.

Even in cases where an automobile was not immediately mobile, the lesser expectation of privacy resulting from its use as a readily mobile vehicle justified application of the vehicular exception. See, e. g., Cady v. Dombrowski, supra. In some cases, the configuration of the vehicle contributed to the lower expectations of privacy; for example, we held in Cardwell v. Lewis, supra, at 590, that, because the passenger compartment of a standard automobile is relatively open to plain view, there are lesser expectations of privacy. But even when enclosed “repository” areas have been involved, we have concluded that the lesser expectations of privacy warrant application of the exception. We have applied the exception in the context of a locked car trunk, Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, a sealed package in a car trunk, Ross, supra, a closed compartment under the dashboard, Cham *392 bers v. Maroney, supra, the interior of a vehicle’s upholstery, Carroll, supra, or sealed packages inside a covered pickup truck, United States v. Johns, 469 U. S. 478 (1985).

These reduced expectations of privacy derive not from the fact that the area to be searched is in plain view, but from the pervasive regulation of vehicles capable of traveling on the public highways. Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, at 440-441. As we explained in South Dakota v. Opperman, an inventory search case:

“Automobiles, unlike homes, are subjected to pervasive and continuing governmental regulation and controls, including periodic inspection and licensing requirements. As an everyday occurrence, police stop and examine vehicles when license plates or inspection stickers have expired, or if other violations, such as exhaust fumes or excessive noise, are noted, or if headlights or other safety equipment are not in proper working order.” 428 U. S., at 368.

The public is fully aware that it is accorded less privacy in its automobiles because of this compelling governmental need for regulation. Historically, “individuals always [have] been on notice that movable vessels may be stopped and searched on facts giving rise to probable cause that the vehicle contains contraband, without the protection afforded by a magistrate’s prior evaluation of those facts.” Ross, supra, at 806, n. 8. In short, the pervasive schemes of regulation, which necessarily lead to reduced expectations of privacy, and the exigencies attendant to ready mobility justify searches without prior recourse to the authority of a magistrate so long as the overriding standard of probable cause is met.

When a vehicle is being used on the highways, or if it is readily capable of such use and is found stationary in a place not regularly used for residential purposes — temporary or otherwise — the two justifications for the vehicle exception *393come into play.2 First, the vehicle is obviously readily mobile by the turn of an ignition key, if not actually moving. Second, there is a reduced expectation of privacy stemming from its use as a licensed motor vehicle subject to a range of police regulation inapplicable to a fixed dwelling. At least in these circumstances, the overriding societal interests in effective law enforcement justify an immediate search before the vehicle and its occupants become unavailable.

While it is true that respondent’s vehicle possessed some, if not many of the attributes of a home, it is equally clear that the vehicle falls clearly within the scope of the exception laid down in Carroll and applied in succeeding cases. Like the automobile in Carroll, respondent’s motor home was readily mobile. Absent the prompt search and seizure, it could readily have been moved beyond the reach of the police. Furthermore, the vehicle was licensed to “operate on public streets; [was] serviced in public places;. . . and [was] subject to extensive regulation and inspection.” Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 154, n. 2 (1978) (Powell, J., concurring). And the vehicle was so situated that an objective observer would conclude that it was being used not as a residence, but as a vehicle.

Respondent urges us to distinguish his vehicle from other vehicles within the exception because it was capable of functioning as a home. In our increasingly mobile society, many vehicles used for transportation can be and are being used not only for transportation but for shelter, i. e., as a “home” or “residence.” To distinguish between respondent’s motor home and an ordinary sedan for purposes of the vehicle exception would require that we apply the exception depending upon the size of the vehicle and the quality of its appointments. Moreover, to fail to apply the exception to vehicles *394such as a motor home ignores the fact that a motor home lends itself easily to use as an instrument of illicit drug traffic and other illegal activity. In United States v. Ross, 456 U. S., at 822, we declined to distinguish between “worthy” and “unworthy” containers, noting that “the central purpose of the Fourth Amendment forecloses such a distinction. ” We decline today to distinguish between “worthy” and “unworthy” vehicles which are either on the public roads and highways, or situated such that it is reasonable to conclude that the vehicle is not being used as a residence.

Our application of the vehicle exception has never turned on the other uses to which a vehicle might be put. The exception has historically turned on the ready mobility of the vehicle, and on the presence of the vehicle in a setting that objectively indicates that the vehicle is being used for transportation.3 These two requirements for application of the exception ensure that law enforcement officials are not unnecessarily hamstrung in their efforts to detect and prosecute criminal activity, and that the legitimate privacy interests of the public are protected. Applyingthe vehicle exception in these circumstances allows the essential purposes served by the exception to be fulfilled, while assuring that the exception will acknowledge legitimate privacy interests.

III

The question remains whether, apart from the lack of a warrant, this search was unreasonable. Under the vehicle exception to the warrant requirement, “[ojnly the prior approval of the magistrate is waived; the search otherwise [must be such] as the magistrate could authorize.” Ross, supra, at 823.

*395This search was not unreasonable; it was plainly one that the magistrate could authorize if presented with these facts. The DEA agents had fresh, direct, uncontradicted evidence that the respondent was distributing a controlled substance from the vehicle, apart from evidence of other possible offenses. The agents thus had abundant probable cause to enter and search the vehicle for evidence of a crime notwithstanding its possible use as a dwelling place.

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

It is so ordered.

Justice Stevens,

with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join, dissenting.

The character of “the place to be searched”1 plays an important role in Fourth Amendment analysis. In this case, police officers searched a Dodge/Midas Mini Motor Home. The California Supreme Court correctly characterized this vehicle as a “hybrid” which combines “the mobility attribute of an automobile . . . with most of the privacy characteristics of a house.”2

The hybrid character of the motor home places it at the crossroads between the privacy interests that generally forbid warrantless invasions of the home, Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 585-590 (1980), and the law enforcement interests that support the exception for warrantless searches of automobiles based on probable cause, United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 806, 820 (1982). By choosing to follow the latter route, the Court errs in three respects: it has entered new *396territory prematurely, it has accorded priority to an exception rather than to the general rule, and it has abandoned the limits on the exception imposed by prior cases.

HH

In recent Terms, the Court has displayed little confidence in state and lower federal court decisions that purport to enforce the Fourth Amendment. Unless an order suppressing evidence is clearly correct, a petition for certiorari is likely to garner the four votes required for a grant of plenary review — as the one in this case did. Much of the Court’s “burdensome” workload is a product of its own aggressiveness in this area. By promoting the Supreme Court of the United States as the High Magistrate for every warrantless search and seizure, this practice has burdened the argument docket with cases presenting fact-bound errors of minimal significance.3 It has also encouraged state legal officers to file petitions for certiorari in even the most frivolous search and seizure cases.4

The Court’s lack of trust in lower judicial authority has resulted in another improvident exercise of discretionary *397jurisdiction.5 In what is at most only a modest extension of our Fourth Amendment precedents, the California Supreme Court held that police officers may not conduct a nonexigent search of a motor home without a warrant supported by probable cause. The State of California filed a petition for certio-rari contending that the decision below conflicted with the authority of other jurisdictions.6 Even a cursory examination of the cases alleged to be in conflict revealed that they did not consider the question presented here.7

*398This is not a case “in which an American citizen has been deprived of a right secured by the United States Constitution or a federal statute. Rather, ... a state court has upheld a citizen’s assertion of a right, finding the citizen to be protected under both federal and state law.” Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1067-1068 (1983) (Stevens, J., dissenting). As an unusually perceptive study of this Court’s docket stated with reference to California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992 (1983), “this . . . situation . . . rarely presents a compelling reason for Court review in the absence of a fully percolated conflict.”8 The Court’s decision to forge ahead *399has established a rule for searching motor homes that is to be followed by the entire Nation. If the' Court had merely allowed the decision below to stand, it would have only governed searches of those vehicles in a single State. The breadth of this Court’s mandate counsels greater patience before we offer our binding judgment on the meaning of the Constitution.

Premature resolution of the novel question presented has stunted the natural growth and refinement of alternative principles. Despite the age of the automobile exception and the countless cases in which it has been applied, we have no prior cases defining the contours of a reasonable search in the context of hybrids such as motor homes, house trailers, houseboats, or yachts. In this case, the Court can barely glimpse the diverse lifestyles associated with recreational vehicles and mobile living quarters.9 The line or lines separating mobile homes from permanent structures might have been drawn in various ways, with consideration given to whether the home is moving or at rest, whether it rests on land or water, the form of the vehicle’s attachment to its location, its potential speed of departure, its size and capacity to serve as a domicile, and its method of locomotion. Rational decisionmaking strongly counsels against divining the uses and abuses of these vehicles in the vacuum of the first case raising the question before us.

Of course, we may not abdicate our responsibility to clarify the law in this field. Some caution, however, is justified when every decision requires us to resolve a vexing “conflict . . . between the individual’s constitutionally protected interest in privacy and the public interest in effective law enforcement.” United States v. Ross, 456 U. S., at 804. “The certainty that is supposed to come from speedy resolution *400may prove illusory if a premature decision raises more questions than it answers.”10 The only true rules governing search and seizure have been formulated and refined in the painstaking scrutiny of case-by-case adjudication. Consideration of this matter by the lower courts in a series of litigated cases would surely have facilitated a reasoned accommodation of the conflicting interests. To identify rules that will endure, we must rely on the state and lower federal courts to debate and evaluate the different approaches to difficult and unresolved questions of constitutional law.11 Deliberation on the question over time winnows out the unnecessary *401and discordant elements of doctrine and preserves “whatever is pure and sound and fine.”12

HH I — I

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” We have interpreted this language to provide law enforcement officers with a bright-line standard: “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.” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967) (footnotes omitted); Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, 758 (1979).

In United States v. Ross, the Court reaffirmed the primary importance of the general rule condemning warrantless searches, and emphasized that the exception permitting the search of automobiles without a warrant is a narrow one. 456 U. S., at 824-825. We expressly endorsed “the general rule,” stated in Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 156 (1925), that “ ‘[i]n cases where the securing of a warrant is reasonably practicable, it must be used.’ ” 456 U. S., at 807. Given this warning and the presumption of regularity that attaches to a warrant,13 it is hardly unrealistic to expect experienced law enforcement officers to obtain a search warrant when one can easily be secured.

The ascendancy of the warrant requirement in our system of justice must not be bullied aside by extravagant claims of necessity:

“ ‘The warrant requirement... is not an inconvenience to be somehow “weighed” against the claims of police efficiency. It is, or should be, an important working part *402of our machinery of government, operating as a matter of course to check the “well-intentioned but mistakenly overzealous executive officers” who are a part of any system of law enforcement.’ [Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 481 (1971).]

“. . . By requiring that conclusions concerning probable cause and the scope of a search ‘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’ Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 14 (1948), we minimize the risk of unreasonable assertions of executive authority.” Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S., at 758-759.

If the motor home were parked in the exact middle of the intersection between the general rule and the exception for automobiles, priority should be given to the rule rather than the exception.

Ill

The motor home, however, was not parked in the middle of that intersection. Our prior cases teach us that inherent mobility is not a sufficient justification for the fashioning of an exception to the warrant requirement, especially in the face of heightened expectations of privacy in the location searched. Motor homes, by their common use and construction, afford their owners a substantial and legitimate expectation of privacy when they dwell within. When a motor home is parked in a location that is removed from the public highway, I believe that society is prepared to recognize that the expectations of privacy within it are not unlike the expectations one has in a fixed dwelling. As a general rule, such places may only be searched with a warrant based upon probable cause. Warrantless searches of motor homes are only reasonable when the motor home is traveling on the public streets or highways, or when exigent circumstances otherwise require an immediate search without the expenditure of time necessary to obtain a warrant.

*403As we explained in Ross, the automobile exception is the product of a long history:

“[SJince its earliest days Congress had recognized the impracticability of securing a warrant in cases involving the transportation of contraband goods. It is this impracticability, viewed in historical perspective, that provided the basis for the Carroll decision. Given the nature of an automobile in transit, the Court recognized that an immediate intrusion is necessary if police officers are to secure the illicit substance. In this class of cases, the Court held that a warrantless search of an automobile is not unreasonable.” 456 U. S., at 806-807 (footnotes omitted).14

The automobile exception has been developed to ameliorate the practical problems associated with the search of vehicles that have been stopped on the streets or public highways because there was probable cause to believe they were transporting contraband. Until today, however, the Court has never decided whether the practical justifications that apply . to a vehicle that is stopped in transit on a public way apply with the same force to a vehicle parked in a lot near a courthouse where it could easily be detained while a warrant is issued.15

*404In this case, the motor home was parked in an off-the-street lot only a few blocks from the courthouse in downtown San Diego where dozens of magistrates were available to entertain a warrant application.16 The officers clearly had the element of surprise with them, and with curtains covering the windshield, the motor home offered no indication of any imminent departure. The officers plainly had probable cause to arrest the respondent and search the motor home, and on this record, it is inexplicable why they eschewed the safe harbor of a warrant.17

In the absence of any evidence of exigency in the circumstances of this case, the Court relies on the inherent mobility of the motor home to create a conclusive presumption of exigency. This Court, however, has squarely held that mobility of the place to be searched is not a sufficient justification for abandoning the warrant requirement. In United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), the Court held that a warrantless search of a footlocker violated the Fourth Amendment even *405though there was ample probable cause to believe it contained contraband. The Government had argued that the rationale of the automobile exception applied to movable containers in general, and that the warrant requirement should be limited to searches of homes and other “core” areas of privacy. See id., at 7. We categorically rejected the Government’s argument, observing that there are greater privacy interests associated with containers than with automobiles,18 and that there are less practical problems associated with the temporary detention of a container than with the detention of an automobile. See id., at 13, and n. 7.

We again endorsed that analysis in Ross:

“The Court in Chadwick specifically rejected the argument that the warrantless search was ‘reasonable’ because a footlocker has some of the mobile characteristics that support warrantless searches of automobiles. The Court recognized that ‘a person’s expectations of privacy in personal luggage are substantially greater than in an automobile,’ [433 U. S., at 13], and noted that the practical problems associated with the temporary detention of a piece of luggage during the period of time necessary to obtain a warrant are significantly less than those associated with the detention of an automobile. Id., at 13, n. 7.” 456 U. S., at 811.

It is perfectly obvious that the citizen has a much greater expectation of privacy concerning the interior of a mobile home than of a piece of luggage such as a footlocker. If “inherent mobility” does not justify warrantless searches *406of containers, it cannot rationally provide a sufficient justification for the search of a person’s dwelling place.

Unlike a brick bungalow or a frame Victorian, a motor home seldom serves as a permanent lifetime abode. The motor home in this case, however, was designed to accommodate a breadth of ordinary everyday living. Photographs in the record indicate that its height, length, and beam provided substantial living space inside: stuffed chairs surround a table; cupboards provide room for storage of personal effects; bunk beds provide sleeping space; and a refrigerator provides ample space for food and beverages.19 Moreover, curtains and large opaque walls inhibit viewing the activities inside from the exterior of the vehicle. The interior configuration of the motor home establishes that the vehicle’s size, shape, and mode of construction should have indicated to the officers that it was a vehicle containing mobile living quarters.

The State contends that officers in the field will have an impossible task determining whether or not other vehicles contain mobile living quarters. It is not necessary for the Court to resolve every unanswered question in this area in a single case, but common English usage suggests that we already distinguish between a “motor home” which is “equipped as a self-contained traveling home,” a “camper” which is only equipped for “casual travel and camping,” and an automobile which is “designed for passenger transportation.”20 Surely the exteriors of these vehicles contain clues about their different functions which could alert officers in the field to the necessity of a warrant.21

*407The California Vehicle Code also refutes the State’s argument that the exclusion of “motor homes” from the automobile exception would be impossible to apply in practice. In its definitional section, the Code distinguishes campers and house cars from station wagons, and suggests that they are special categories of the more general terms — motor vehicles and passenger vehicles.22 A “house car” is “a motor vehicle originally designed, or permanently altered, and equipped for human habitation, or to which a camper has been permanently attached.”23 Alcoholic beverages may not be opened or consumed in motor vehicles traveling on the highways, except in the “living quarters of a housecar or camper.”24 The same definitions might not necessarily apply in the context of the Fourth Amendment, but they do indicate that descriptive distinctions are humanly possible. They also reflect the California Legislature’s judgment that “house cars” entertain different kinds of activities than the ordinary passenger vehicle.

In my opinion, searches of places that regularly accommodate a wide range of private human activity are fundamentally different from searches of automobiles which primarily serve a public transportation function.25 Although it may not be a castle, a motor home is usually the functional equivalent of a hotel room, a vacation and retirement home, or a hunting and fishing cabin. These places may be as spar*408tan as a humble cottage when compared to the most majestic mansion, 456 U. S., at 822; ante, at 398, but the highest and most legitimate expectations of privacy associated with these temporary abodes should command the respect of this Court. Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483, 490 (1964); Payton v. New York, 445 U. S., at 585; United States v. Karo, 468 U. S. 705, 714-715 (1984).26 In my opinion, a warrantless search of living quarters in a motor home is “presumptively unreasonable absent exigent circumstances.” Ibid.

I respectfully dissent.

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.

Justice Scalia

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether police officers violate the Fourth Amendment when they search a passenger’s personal belongings inside an automobile that they have probable cause to believe contains contraband.

I

In the early morning hours of July 23, 1995, a Wyoming Highway Patrol officer stopped an automobile for speeding and driving with a faulty brake light. There were three *298passengers in the front seat of the car: David Young (the driver), his girlfriend, and respondent. While questioning Young, the officer noticed a hypodermic syringe in Young’s shirt pocket. He left the occupants under the supervision of two backup officers as he went to get gloves from his patrol ear. Upon his return, he instructed Young to step out of the car and place the syringe on the hood. The officer then asked Young why he had a syringe; with refreshing candor, Young replied that he used it to take drugs.

At this point, the backup officers ordered the two passengers out of the ear and asked them for identification. Respondent falsely identified herself as “Sandra James” and stated that she did not have any identification. Meanwhile, in light of Young’s admission, the officer searched the passenger compartment of the car for contraband. On the back seat, he found a purse, which respondent claimed as hers. He removed from the purse a wallet containing respondent’s driver’s license, identifying her properly as Sandra K. Houghton. When the officer asked her why she had lied about her name, she replied: “In case things went bad.”

Continuing purse, brown pouch and a black wallet-type container. Respondent denied that the former was hers, and claimed ignorance of how it came to be there; it was found to contain drug paraphernalia and a syringe with 60 ccs of methamphetamine. Respondent admitted ownership of the black container, which was also found to contain drug paraphernalia, and a syringe (which respondent acknowledged was hers) with 10 ccs of methamphetamine — an amount insufficient to support the felony conviction at issue in this ease. The officer also found fresh needle-track marks on respondent’s arms. He placed her under arrest.

The State of Wyoming possession of methamphetamine in a liquid amount greater than three-tenths of a gram. See Wyo. Stat. Ann. §35-7-1031(c)(iii) (Supp. 1996). After a hearing, the trial court de*299nied her motion to suppress all evidence obtained from the purse as the fruit of a violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The court held that the officer had probable cause to search the car for contraband, and, by extension, any containers therein that could hold such contraband. A jury convicted respondent as charged.

The Wyoming Supreme Court, by divided vote, reversed the conviction and announced the following rule:

“Generally, once probable cause is established to search a vehicle, an officer is entitled to search all containers therein which may contain the object of the search. However, if the officer knows or should know that a container is the personal effect of a passenger who is not suspected of criminal activity, then the container is outside the scope of the search unless someone had the opportunity to conceal the contraband within the personal effect to avoid detection.” 956 P. 2d 368, 872 (1998).

The court held that the search of respondent’s purse violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments because the officer “knew or should have known that the purse did not belong to the driver, but to one of the passengers,” and because “there was no probable cause to search the passengers’ personal effects and no reason to believe that contraband had been placed within the purse.” Ibid. We granted certio-rari, 524 U. S. 983 (1998).

II

The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” In determining whether a particular governmental action, violates this provision, we inquire first whether the action was regarded as an unlawful search or seizure under the common law when the Amendment was framed. See Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927, 931 (1995); California v. Hodari D., 499 U. S. 621, 624 (1991). Where that inquiry yields no answer, we must *300evaluate the search or seizure under traditional standards of reasonableness by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests. See, e. g., Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U. S. 646, 652-653 (1995).

It is uncontested in the ease had probable cause to believe there were illegal drugs in the car. Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925), similarly involved the warrantless search of a car that law enforcement officials had probable cause to believe contained contraband — in that case, bootleg liquor. The Court concluded that the Framers would have regarded such a search as reasonable in light of legislation enacted by Congress from 1789 through 1799 — as well as subsequent legislation from the founding era and beyond — that empowered customs officials to search any ship or vessel without a warrant if they had probable cause to believe that it contained goods subject to a duty. Id., at 150-153. See also United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 806 (1982); Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 623-624 (1886). Thus, the Court held that "contraband goods concealed and illegally transported in an automobile or other vehicle may be searched for without a warrant” where probable cause exists. Carroll, supra, at 153.

We have furthermore that the Framers would have regarded as reasonable (if there was probable cause) the warrantless search of containers within an automobile. In Ross, supra, we upheld as reasonable the warrantless search of a paper bag and leather pouch found in the trunk of the defendant’s ear by officers who had probable cause to believe that the trunk contained drugs. Justice Stevens, writing for the Court, observed:

"It is noteworthy that the early legislation on which the Court relied in Carroll concerned the enforcement of laws imposing duties on imported merchandise. . . . Presumably such merchandise was shipped then in con*301tainers of various kinds, just as it is today. Since Congress had authorized warrantless searches of vessels and beasts for imported merchandise, it is inconceivable that it intended a customs officer to obtain a warrant for every package discovered during the search; certainly Congress intended customs officers to open shipping containers when necessary and not merely to examine the exterior of cartons or boxes in which smuggled goods might be concealed. During virtually the entire history of our country — whether contraband was transported in a horse-drawn carriage, a 1921 roadster, or a modern automobile — it has been assumed that a lawful search of a vehicle would include a search of any container that might conceal the object of the search.” Id., at 820, n. 26.

Ross summarized its holding as follows: "If 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 (emphasis added). And our later cases describing Ross have characterized it as applying broadly to all containers within a car, without qualification as to ownership. See, e. g., California v. Acevedo, 500 U. S. 565, 572 (1991) (“[TJhis Court in Ross took the critical step of saying that closed containers in ears could be searched without a warrant because of their presence within the automobile”); United States v. Johns, 469 U. S. 478, 479-480 (1985) (Ross “held that if police officers have probable cause to search a lawfully stopped vehicle, they may conduct a warrantless search of any containers found inside that may conceal the object of the search”).

no passenger in Ross, and it was not claimed that the package in the trunk belonged to anyone other than the driver. Even so, if the rule of law that Ross announced were limited to contents belonging to the driver, or contents other than those belonging to passengers, one would have expected that substantial limitation to be ex*302pressed. And, more importantly, one would have expected that limitation to be apparent in the historical evidence that formed the basis for Ross’,s holding. In fact, however, nothing in the statutes Ross relied upon, or in the practice under those statutes, would except from authorized warrantless search packages belonging to passengers on the suspect ship, horse-drawn carriage, or automobile.

Finally, we must derlying the rule announced in Ross is fiilly consistent — as respondent’s proposal is not — with the balance of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Ross concluded from the historical evidence that the permissible scope of a warrantless car search “is defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe that it may be found.” 456 U. S., at 824. The same principle is reflected in an earlier case involving the constitutionality of a search warrant directed at premises belonging to one who is not suspected of any crime: “The critical element in a reasonable search is not that the owner of the property is suspected of crime but that there is reasonable cause to believe that the specific ‘things’ to be searched for and seized are located on the property to which entry is sought.” Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 486 U. S. 547, 556 (1978). This statement was illustrated by citation and description of Carroll, 267 U. S., at 158-159, 167. 436 U. S., at 556-557.

In sum, neither Ross nor relied upon admits of a distinction among packages or containers based on ownership. When there is probable cause to search for contraband in a ear, it is reasonable for police officers — like customs officials in the founding era — to examine packages and containers without a showing of individualized probable cause for each one. A passenger’s personal belongings, just like the driver’s belongings or containers attached to the car like a glove compartment, are “in” the car, and the officer has probable cause to search for contraband in the car.

*303Even if the historical evidence, as described by Ross, were thought to be equivocal, we would find that the balancing of the relative interests weighs decidedly in favor of allowing searches of a passenger’s belongings. Passengers, no less than drivers, possess a reduced expectation of privacy with regard to the property that they transport in cars, which “trave[l] public thoroughfares,” Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U. S. 583, 590 (1974), “seldom serv[e] as ... the repository of personal effects,” ibid., are subjected to police stop and examination to enforce “pervasive” governmental controls “[a]s an everyday occurrence,” South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 368 (1976), and, finally, are exposed to traffic accidents that may render all their contents open to public scrutiny.

degree of intrusiveness upon personal privacy and indeed even personal dignity — the two cases the Wyoming Supreme Court found dispositive differ substantially from the package search at issue here. United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581 (1948), held that probable cause to search a ear did not justify a body search of a passenger. And Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U. S. 85 (1979), held that a search warrant for a tavern and its bartender did not permit body searches of all the bar’s patrons. These eases turned on the unique, significantly heightened protection afforded against searches of one’s person. “Even a limited search of the outer clothing . . . constitutes a severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security, and it must surely be an annoying, frightening, and perhaps humiliating experience.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1968). Such traumatic consequences are not to be expected when the police examine an item of personal property found in a car.1

*304Whereas the passenger’s privacy expectations are, as we have described, considerably diminished, the governmental interests at stake are substantial. Effective law enforcement would be appreciably impaired without the ability to search a passenger’s personal belongings when there is reason to believe contraband or evidence of criminal wrongdoing is hidden in the ear. As in all car-search eases, the “ready mobility” of an automobile creates a risk that the evidence or contraband will be permanently lost while a warrant is obtained. California v. Carney, 471 U. S. 386, 390 (1985). In addition, a car passenger — unlike the unwitting tavern patron in Ybarra — will often be engaged in a common enterprise with the driver, and have the same interest in *305concealing the fruits or the evidence of their wrongdoing. Cf. Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U. S. 408, 413-414 (1997). A criminal might be able to hide contraband in a passenger’s belongings as readily as in other containers in the ear, see, e. g., Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U. S. 98, 102 (1980) — perhaps even surreptitiously, without the passenger’s knowledge or permission. (This last possibility provided the basis for respondent’s defense at trial; she testified that most of the seized contraband must have been placed in her purse by her traveling companions at one or another of various times, including the time she was “half asleep” in the car.)

a search will not always be present, but the balancing of interests must be conducted with an eye to the generality of cases. To require that the investigating officer have positive reason to believe that the passenger and driver were engaged in a common enterprise, or positive reason to believe that the driver had time and occasion to conceal the item in the passenger’s belongings, surreptitiously or with friendly permission, is to impose requirements so seldom met that a “passenger’s property” rule would dramatically reduce the ability to find and seize contraband and evidence of crime. Of course these requirements would not attach (under the Wyoming Supreme Court’s rule) until the police officer knows or has reason to know that the container belongs to a passenger. But once a “passenger’s property” exception to car searches became widely known, one would expect passenger-confederates to claim everything as their own. And one would anticipate a bog of litigation — in the form of both civil lawsuits and motions to suppress in criminal trials — involving such questions as whether the officer should have believed a passenger’s claim of ownership, whether he should have inferred ownership from various objective factors, whether he had probable cause to believe that the passenger was a confederate, or to believe that the driver might have introduced the contraband *306into the package with or without the passenger’s knowledge.2 When balancing the competing interests, our determinations of “reasonableness” under the Fourth Amendment must take account of these practical realities. We think they militate in favor of the needs of law enforcement, and against a personal-privacy interest that is ordinarily weak.

Finally, if we were cal practice that Ross accurately described and summarized, it is perplexing why that exception should protect only property belonging to a passenger, rather than (what seems much more logical) property belonging to anyone other than the driver. Surely Houghton’s privacy would have been invaded to the same degree whether she was present or absent when her purse was searched. And surely her presence in the car with the driver provided more, rather than less, reason to believe that the two were in league. It may ordinarily be easier to identify the property as belonging to someone other than the driver when the purported owner is present to identify it — but in the many cases (like Ross itself) where the ear is seized, that identification may occur later, at the sta*307tion house; and even at the site of the stop one can readily imagine a package clearly marked with the owner’s name and phone number, by which the officer can confirm the driver’s denial of ownership. The sensible rule (and the one supported by history and case law) is that such a package may be searched, whether or not its owner is present as a passenger or otherwise, because it may contain the contraband that the officer has reason to believe is in the car.

•fí ^

We hold that police officers with probable cause to search a car may inspect passengers’ belongings found in the ear that are capable of concealing the object of the search. The judgment of the Wyoming Supreme Court is reversed.

It is so ordered.

Justice Breyer,

concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion with the understanding that history is meant to inform, but not automatically to determine, the answer to a Fourth Amendment question. Ante, at 299-300. I also agree with the Court that when a police officer has probable cause to search a ear, say, for drugs, it is reasonable for that officer also to search containers within the car. If the police must establish a container’s ownership prior to the search of that container (whenever, for example, a passenger says “that’s mine”), the resulting uncertainty will destroy the workability of the bright-line rule set forth in United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 (1982). At the same time, police officers with probable cause to search a car for drugs would often have probable cause to search containers regardless. Hence a bright-line rule will authorize only a limited number of searches that the law would not otherwise justify.

At the same time, I would point out certain limitations upon the scope of the bright-line rule that the Court de*308scribes. Obviously, the rule applies only to automobile searches. Equally obviously, the rule applies only to containers found within automobiles. And it does not extend to the search of a person found in that automobile. As the Court notes, and as United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 586-587 (1948), relied on heavily by Justice Stevens’ dissent, makes clear, the search of a person, including even ‘“a limited search of the outer clothing,’ ” ante, at 303 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1968)), is a very different matter in respect to which the law provides “significantly heightened protection.” Ante, at 303; cf. Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U. S. 85, 91 (1979); Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 62-64 (1968).

Less obviously, but in my view also important, that the container here at issue, a woman’s purse, was found at a considerable distance from its owner, who did not claim ownership until the officer discovered her identification while looking through it. Purses are special containers. They are repositories of especially personal items that people generally like to keep with them at all times. So I am tempted to say that a search of a purse involves an intrusion so similar to a search of one’s person that the same rule should govern both. However, given this Court’s prior cases, I cannot argue that the fact that the container was a purse automatically makes a legal difference, for the Court has warned against trying to make that kind of distinction. United States v. Ross, supra, at 822. But I can say that it would matter if a woman’s purse, like a man’s billfold, were attached to her person. It might then amount to a kind of “outer clothing,” Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 24, which under the Court’s cases would properly receive increased protection. See post, at 312-313 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (quoting United States v. Di Re, supra, at 587). In this ease, the purse was separate from the person, and no one has claimed that, under those circumstances, the type of container makes a difference. For that reason, I join the Court’s opinion.

*309Justice Stevens,

with whom Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.

After Wyoming’s highest court decided that a state highway patrolman unlawfully searched Sandra Houghton’s purse, the State of Wyoming petitioned for a writ of cer-tiorari. The State asked that we consider the propriety of searching an automobile passenger's belongings when the government has developed probable cause to search the vehicle for contraband based on the driver’s conduct. The State conceded that the trooper who searched Houghton’s purse lacked a warrant, consent, or “probable cause specific to the purse or passenger.” Pet. for Cert. i. In light of our established preference for warrants and individualized suspicion, I would respect the result reached by the Wyoming Supreme Court and affirm its judgment.

In all of our prior cases applying the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, either the defendant was the operator of the vehicle and in custody of the object of the search, or no question was raised as to the defendant’s ownership or custody.1 In the only automobile case confronting the search of a passenger defendant— United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581 (1948) — the Court held that the exception to the warrant requirement did not apply. Id., at 583-587 (addressing searches of the passenger’s pockets and the space between his shirt and underwear, both of which uncovered counterfeit fuel rations). In Di Re, as here, the information prompting the search directly implicated the driver, not the passenger. Today, instead of adhering to the settled distinction between drivers and passengers, the Court fashions a new rule that is based on a distinction between property contained in elothing worn by *310a passenger and property contained in a passenger’s briefcase or purse. In cases on both sides of the Court’s newly minted test, the property is in a “container” (whether a pocket or a pouch) located in the vehicle. Moreover, unlike the Court, I think it quite plain that the search of a passenger’s purse or briefcase involves an intrusion on privacy that may be just as serious as was the intrusion in Di Re. See, e. g., New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 339 (1985); Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S. 727, 733 (1878).

Even apart proach is not dictated by precedent. For example, in United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 (1982), we were concerned with the interest of the driver in the integrity of “his automobile,” id., at 823, and we categorically rejected the notion that the scope of a warrantless search of a vehicle might be “defined by the nature of the container in which the contraband is secreted,” id., at 824. “Rather, it is defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe that it may be found.” Ibid. We thus disapproved of a possible container-based distinction between a man’s pocket and a woman’s pocketbook. Ironically, while we concluded in Ross that “[pjrobable 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., the rule the Court fashions would apparently permit a war-rantless search of a passenger’s briefcase if there is probable cause to believe the taxidriver had a syringe somewhere in his vehicle.

Nor am I persuaded that the mere tween a passenger and a driver provides an acceptable basis for presuming that they are partners in crime or for ignoring privacy interests in a purse.2 Whether or not the Fourth *311Amendment required a warrant to search Houghton’s purse, cf. Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 153 (1925), at the very least the trooper in this case had to have probable cause to believe that her purse contained contraband. The Wyoming Supreme Court concluded that he did not. 956 P. 2d 363, 372 (1998); see App. 20-21.

Finally, in my view, the State’s legitimate interest in effective law enforcement does not outweigh the privacy concerns at issue.3 I am as confident in a police officer’s ability to apply a rule requiring a warrant or individualized probable cause to search belongings that are — as in this case — obviously owned by and in the custody of a passenger as is the Court in a “passenger-eonfederate[’]s” ability to circumvent the rule. Ante, at 305. Certainly the ostensible clarity of the Court’s rule is attractive. But that virtue is insufficient justification for its adoption. Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U. S. *312321, 329 (1987); Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 393 (1978). Moreover, a rule requiring a warrant or individualized probable cause to search passenger belongings is every bit as simple as the Court’s rule; it simply protects more privacy.

I would decide this case in accord we about passengers and privacy, rather than what we might have said in cases where the issue was not squarely presented. See ante, at 301-302. What Justice Jackson wrote for the Court 50 years ago is just as sound today:

“The Government says it would not contend that, armed with a search warrant for a residence only, it could search all persons found in it. But an occupant of a house could be used to conceal this contraband on his person quite as readily as can an occupant of a car. Necessity, an argument advanced in support of this search, would seem as strong a reason for searching guests of a house for which a search warrant had issued as for search of guests in a car for which none had been issued. By a parity of reasoning with that on which the Government disclaims the right to search occupants of a house, we suppose the Government would not contend that if it had a valid search warrant for the car only it could search the occupants as an incident to its execution. How then could we say that the right to search a car without a warrant confers greater latitude to search occupants than a search by warrant would permit?

“We see no ground for expanding the ruling in the Carroll case to justify this arrest and search as incident to the search of a ear. We are not convinced that a person, by mere presence in a suspected car, loses immunities from search of his person to which he would otherwise be entitled.” Di Re, 332 U. S., at 587.

Accord, Ross, 456 U. S., at 823, 825 (the proper scope of a warrantless automobile search based on probable cause is “no broader” than the proper scope of a search authorized *313by a warrant supported by probable cause).4 Instead of applying ordinary Fourth Amendment principles to this case, the majority extends the automobile warrant exception to allow searches of passenger belongings based on the driver’s misconduct. Thankfully, the Court’s automobile-centered analysis limits the scope of its holding. But it does not justify the outcome in this case.

I respectfully dissent.

Justice SOTOMAYOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment permits a police officer, uninvited and without a warrant, to enter the curtilage of a home in order to search a vehicle parked therein. It does not.

I

Officer Matthew McCall of the Albemarle County Police Department in Virginia saw the driver of an orange and black motorcycle with an extended frame commit a traffic infraction. The driver eluded Officer McCall's attempt to stop the motorcycle. A few weeks later, Officer David Rhodes of the same department saw an orange and black motorcycle traveling well over the speed limit, but the driver got away from him, too. The officers compared notes and concluded that the two incidents involved the same motorcyclist.

Upon further investigation, the officers learned that the motorcycle likely was stolen and in the possession of petitioner Ryan Collins. After discovering photographs on Collins' Facebook profile that featured an orange and black motorcycle parked at the top of the driveway of a house, Officer Rhodes tracked down the address of the house, drove there, and parked on the street. It was later established that Collins' girlfriend lived in the house and that Collins stayed there a few nights per week.1

From his parked position on the street, Officer Rhodes saw what appeared to be a motorcycle with an extended frame covered with a white tarp, parked at the same angle and in the same location on the driveway as in the Facebook photograph. Officer Rhodes, who did not have a warrant, exited his car and walked toward the house. He stopped to take a photograph of the covered motorcycle from the sidewalk, and then walked onto the residential property and up to the top of the driveway to where the motorcycle was parked. In order "to investigate further," App. 80, Officer Rhodes pulled off the tarp, revealing a motorcycle that looked like the one from the speeding incident. He then ran a search of the license plate and vehicle identification numbers, which confirmed that the motorcycle was stolen. After gathering this information, Officer Rhodes took a photograph of the uncovered motorcycle, put the tarp back on, left the property, and returned to his car to wait for Collins.

Shortly thereafter, Collins returned home. Officer Rhodes walked up to the front door of the house and knocked. Collins answered, agreed to speak with Officer Rhodes, and admitted that the motorcycle *1669was his and that he had bought it without title. Officer Rhodes then arrested Collins.

Collins was indicted by a Virginia grand jury for receiving stolen property. He filed a pretrial motion to suppress the evidence that Officer Rhodes had obtained as a result of the warrantless search of the motorcycle. Collins argued that Officer Rhodes had trespassed on the curtilage of the house to conduct an investigation in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The trial court denied the motion and Collins was convicted.

The Court of Appeals of Virginia affirmed. It assumed that the motorcycle was parked in the curtilage of the home and held that Officer Rhodes had probable cause to believe that the motorcycle under the tarp was the same motorcycle that had evaded him in the past. It further concluded that Officer Rhodes' actions were lawful under the Fourth Amendment even absent a warrant because "numerous exigencies justified both his entry onto the property and his moving the tarp to view the motorcycle and record its identification number." 65 Va.App. 37, 46, 773 S.E.2d 618, 623 (2015).

The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed on different reasoning. It explained that the case was most properly resolved with reference to the Fourth Amendment's automobile exception. 292 Va. 486, 496-501, 790 S.E.2d 611, 616-618 (2016). Under that framework, it held that Officer Rhodes had probable cause to believe that the motorcycle was contraband, and that the warrantless search therefore was justified. Id., at 498-499, 790 S.E.2d, at 617.

We granted certiorari, 582 U.S. ----, 138 S.Ct. 53, 198 L.Ed.2d 780 (2017), and now reverse.

II

The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." This case arises at the intersection of two components of the Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: the automobile exception to the warrant requirement and the protection extended to the curtilage of a home.

A

1

The Court has held that the search of an automobile can be reasonable without a warrant. The Court first articulated the so-called automobile exception in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925). In that case, law enforcement officers had probable cause to believe that a car they observed traveling on the road contained illegal liquor. They stopped and searched the car, discovered and seized the illegal liquor, and arrested the occupants. Id., at 134-136, 45 S.Ct. 280. The Court upheld the warrantless search and seizure, explaining that a "necessary difference" exists between searching "a store, dwelling house or other structure" and searching "a ship, motor boat, wagon or automobile" because a "vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in which the warrant must be sought." Id., at 153, 45 S.Ct. 280.

The "ready mobility" of vehicles served as the core justification for the automobile exception for many years. California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 390, 105 S.Ct. 2066, 85 L.Ed.2d 406 (1985) (citing, e.g., Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 59, 87 S.Ct. 788, 17 L.Ed.2d 730 (1967) ; Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 51-52, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970) ). Later *1670cases then introduced an additional rationale based on "the pervasive regulation of vehicles capable of traveling on the public highways." Carney, 471 U.S., at 392, 105 S.Ct. 2066. As the Court explained in South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976) :

"Automobiles, unlike homes, are subjected to pervasive and continuing governmental regulation and controls, including periodic inspection and licensing requirements. As an everyday occurrence, police stop and examine vehicles when license plates or inspection stickers have expired, or if other violations, such as exhaust fumes or excessive noise, are noted, or if headlights or other safety equipment are not in proper working order." Id., at 368, 96 S.Ct. 3092.

In announcing each of these two justifications, the Court took care to emphasize that the rationales applied only to automobiles and not to houses, and therefore supported "treating automobiles differently from houses" as a constitutional matter. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973).

When these justifications for the automobile exception "come into play," officers may search an automobile without having obtained a warrant so long as they have probable cause to do so. Carney, 471 U.S., at 392-393, 105 S.Ct. 2066.

2

Like the automobile exception, the Fourth Amendment's protection of curtilage has long been black letter law. "[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals." Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 6, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 185 L.Ed.2d 495 (2013). "At the Amendment's 'very core' stands 'the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.' " Ibid. (quoting Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 81 S.Ct. 679, 5 L.Ed.2d 734 (1961) ). To give full practical effect to that right, the Court considers curtilage-"the area 'immediately surrounding and associated with the home' "-to be " 'part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes.' " Jardines, 569 U.S., at 6, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (quoting Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 180, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984) ). "The protection afforded the curtilage is essentially a protection of families and personal privacy in an area intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically, where privacy expectations are most heightened." California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 212-213, 106 S.Ct. 1809, 90 L.Ed.2d 210 (1986).

When a law enforcement officer physically intrudes on the curtilage to gather evidence, a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment has occurred. Jardines, 569 U.S., at 11, 133 S.Ct. 1409. Such conduct thus is presumptively unreasonable absent a warrant.

B

1

With this background in mind, we turn to the application of these doctrines in the instant case. As an initial matter, we decide whether the part of the driveway where Collins' motorcycle was parked and subsequently searched is curtilage.

According to photographs in the record, the driveway runs alongside the front lawn and up a few yards past the front perimeter of the house. The top portion of the driveway that sits behind the front perimeter of the house is enclosed on two sides by a brick wall about the height of a car and on a third side by the house. A side *1671door provides direct access between this partially enclosed section of the driveway and the house. A visitor endeavoring to reach the front door of the house would have to walk partway up the driveway, but would turn off before entering the enclosure and instead proceed up a set of steps leading to the front porch. When Officer Rhodes searched the motorcycle, it was parked inside this partially enclosed top portion of the driveway that abuts the house.

The " 'conception defining the curtilage' is ... familiar enough that it is 'easily understood from our daily experience.' " Jardines, 569 U.S., at 7, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (quoting Oliver, 466 U.S., at 182, n. 12, 104 S.Ct. 1735 ). Just like the front porch, side garden, or area "outside the front window," Jardines, 569 U.S., at 6, 133 S.Ct. 1409, the driveway enclosure where Officer Rhodes searched the motorcycle constitutes "an area adjacent to the home and 'to which the activity of home life extends,' " and so is properly considered curtilage, id., at 7, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (quoting Oliver, 466 U.S., at 182, n. 12, 104 S.Ct. 1735 ).

2

In physically intruding on the curtilage of Collins' home to search the motorcycle, Officer Rhodes not only invaded Collins' Fourth Amendment interest in the item searched, i.e., the motorcycle, but also invaded Collins' Fourth Amendment interest in the curtilage of his home. The question before the Court is whether the automobile exception justifies the invasion of the curtilage.2 The answer is no.

Applying the relevant legal principles to a slightly different factual scenario confirms that this is an easy case. Imagine a motorcycle parked inside the living room of a house, visible through a window to a passerby on the street. Imagine further that an officer has probable cause to believe that the motorcycle was involved in a traffic infraction. Can the officer, acting without a warrant, enter the house to search the motorcycle and confirm whether it is the right one? Surely not.

The reason is that the scope of the automobile exception extends no further than the automobile itself. See, e.g., Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940, 116 S.Ct. 2485, 135 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1996) (per curiam ) (explaining that the automobile exception "permits police to search the vehicle"); Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300, 119 S.Ct. 1297, 143 L.Ed.2d 408 (1999) ("[T]he Framers would have regarded as reasonable (if there was probable cause) the warrantless search of containers within an automobile"). Virginia asks the Court to expand the scope of the automobile exception to permit police to invade any space outside an automobile even if the Fourth Amendment protects that space. Nothing in our case law, however, suggests that the automobile exception gives an officer the right to enter a home or its curtilage to access a vehicle without a warrant. Expanding the scope of the automobile exception in this way would both undervalue the core Fourth Amendment protection afforded to the home and its curtilage and " 'untether' " the automobile exception " 'from the justifications underlying' " it.

*1672Riley v. California, 573 U.S. ----, ----, 134 S.Ct. 2473, 2485, 189 L.Ed.2d 430 (2014) (quoting Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 343, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009) ).

The Court already has declined to expand the scope of other exceptions to the warrant requirement to permit warrantless entry into the home. The reasoning behind those decisions applies equally well in this context. For instance, under the plain-view doctrine, "any valid warrantless seizure of incriminating evidence" requires that the officer "have a lawful right of access to the object itself." Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 136-137, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990) ; see also id., at 137, n. 7, 110 S.Ct. 2301 (" '[E]ven where the object is contraband, this Court has repeatedly stated and enforced the basic rule that the police may not enter and make a warrantless seizure' "); G.M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338, 354, 97 S.Ct. 619, 50 L.Ed.2d 530 (1977) ("It is one thing to seize without a warrant property resting in an open area ..., and it is quite another thing to effect a warrantless seizure of property ... situated on private premises to which access is not otherwise available for the seizing officer"). A plain-view seizure thus cannot be justified if it is effectuated "by unlawful trespass." Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 66, 113 S.Ct. 538, 121 L.Ed.2d 450 (1992). Had Officer Rhodes seen illegal drugs through the window of Collins' house, for example, assuming no other warrant exception applied, he could not have entered the house to seize them without first obtaining a warrant.

Similarly, it is a "settled rule that warrantless arrests in public places are valid," but, absent another exception such as exigent circumstances, officers may not enter a home to make an arrest without a warrant, even when they have probable cause. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 587-590, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). That is because being " 'arrested in the home involves not only the invasion attendant to all arrests but also an invasion of the sanctity of the home.' " Id., at 588-589, 100 S.Ct. 1371 (quoting United States v. Reed, 572 F.2d 412, 423 (C.A.2 1978) ). Likewise, searching a vehicle parked in the curtilage involves not only the invasion of the Fourth Amendment interest in the vehicle but also an invasion of the sanctity of the curtilage.

Just as an officer must have a lawful right of access to any contraband he discovers in plain view in order to seize it without a warrant, and just as an officer must have a lawful right of access in order to arrest a person in his home, so, too, an officer must have a lawful right of access to a vehicle in order to search it pursuant to the automobile exception. The automobile exception does not afford the necessary lawful right of access to search a vehicle parked within a home or its curtilage because it does not justify an intrusion on a person's separate and substantial Fourth Amendment interest in his home and curtilage.

As noted, the rationales underlying the automobile exception are specific to the nature of a vehicle and the ways in which it is distinct from a house. See Part II-A-1, supra . The rationales thus take account only of the balance between the intrusion on an individual's Fourth Amendment interest in his vehicle and the governmental interests in an expedient search of that vehicle; they do not account for the distinct privacy interest in one's home or curtilage. To allow an officer to rely on the automobile exception to gain entry into a house or its curtilage for the purpose of conducting a vehicle search would unmoor the exception from its justifications, render hollow the core Fourth Amendment protection the Constitution extends to the house and its curtilage, and transform *1673what was meant to be an exception into a tool with far broader application. Indeed, its name alone should make all this clear enough: It is, after all, an exception for automobiles.3

Given the centrality of the Fourth Amendment interest in the home and its curtilage and the disconnect between that interest and the justifications behind the automobile exception, we decline Virginia's invitation to extend the automobile exception to permit a warrantless intrusion on a home or its curtilage.

III

A

Virginia argues that this Court's precedent indicates that the automobile exception is a categorical one that permits the warrantless search of a vehicle anytime, anywhere, including in a home or curtilage. Specifically, Virginia points to two decisions that it contends resolve this case in its favor. Neither is dispositive or persuasive.

First, Virginia invokes Scher v. United States, 305 U.S. 251, 59 S.Ct. 174, 83 L.Ed. 151 (1938). In that case, federal officers received a confidential tip that a particular car would be transporting bootleg liquor at a specified time and place. The officers identified and followed the car until the driver "turned into a garage a few feet back of his residence and within the curtilage." Id., at 253, 59 S.Ct. 174. As the driver exited his car, an officer approached *1674and stated that he had been informed that the car was carrying contraband. The driver acknowledged that there was liquor in the trunk, and the officer proceeded to open the trunk, find the liquor, arrest the driver, and seize both the car and the liquor. Id., at 253-254, 59 S.Ct. 174. Although the officer did not have a search warrant, the Court upheld the officer's actions as reasonable. Id., at 255, 59 S.Ct. 174.

Scher is inapposite. Whereas Collins' motorcycle was parked and unattended when Officer Rhodes intruded on the curtilage to search it, the officers in Scher first encountered the vehicle when it was being driven on public streets, approached the curtilage of the home only when the driver turned into the garage, and searched the vehicle only after the driver admitted that it contained contraband. Scher by no means established a general rule that the automobile exception permits officers to enter a home or its curtilage absent a warrant. The Court's brief analysis referenced Carroll, but only in the context of observing that, consistent with that case, the "officers properly could have stopped" and searched the car "just before [petitioner] entered the garage," a proposition the petitioner did "not seriously controvert." Scher, 305 U.S., at 254-255, 59 S.Ct. 174. The Court then explained that the officers did not lose their ability to stop and search the car when it entered "the open garage closely followed by the observing officer" because "[n]o search was made of the garage." Id., at 255, 59 S.Ct. 174. It emphasized that "[e]xamination of the automobile accompanied an arrest, without objection and upon admission of probable guilt," and cited two search-incident-to-arrest cases. Ibid. (citing Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 30, 46 S.Ct. 4, 70 L.Ed. 145 (1925) ; Wisniewski v. United States, 47 F.2d 825, 826 (C.A.6 1931) ). Scher 's reasoning thus was both case specific and imprecise, sounding in multiple doctrines, particularly, and perhaps most appropriately, hot pursuit. The decision is best regarded as a factbound one, and it certainly does not control this case.

Second, Virginia points to Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 116 S.Ct. 2485, where the Court upheld under the automobile exception the warrantless search of an individual's pickup truck that was parked in the driveway of his father-in-law's farmhouse. Id., at 939-940, 116 S.Ct. 2485 ; Commonwealth v. Kilgore, 544 Pa. 439, 444, 677 A.2d 311, 313 (1995). But Labron provides scant support for Virginia's position. Unlike in this case, there was no indication that the individual who owned the truck in Labron had any Fourth Amendment interest in the farmhouse or its driveway, nor was there a determination that the driveway was curtilage.

B

Alternatively, Virginia urges the Court to adopt a more limited rule regarding the intersection of the automobile exception and the protection afforded to curtilage. Virginia would prefer that the Court draw a bright line and hold that the automobile exception does not permit warrantless entry into "the physical threshold of a house or a similar fixed, enclosed structure inside the curtilage like a garage." Brief for Respondent 46. Requiring officers to make "case-by-case curtilage determinations," Virginia reasons, unnecessarily complicates matters and "raises the potential for confusion and ... error." Id., at 46-47 (internal quotation marks omitted).

The Court, though, has long been clear that curtilage is afforded constitutional protection. See Oliver, 466 U.S., at 180, 104 S.Ct. 1735. As a result, officers regularly assess whether an area is curtilage *1675before executing a search. Virginia provides no reason to conclude that this practice has proved to be unadministrable, either generally or in this context. Moreover, creating a carveout to the general rule that curtilage receives Fourth Amendment protection, such that certain types of curtilage would receive Fourth Amendment protection only for some purposes but not for others, seems far more likely to create confusion than does uniform application of the Court's doctrine.

In addition, Virginia's proposed rule rests on a mistaken premise about the constitutional significance of visibility. The ability to observe inside curtilage from a lawful vantage point is not the same as the right to enter curtilage without a warrant for the purpose of conducting a search to obtain information not otherwise accessible. Cf. Ciraolo, 476 U.S., at 213-214, 106 S.Ct. 1809 (holding that "physically nonintrusive" warrantless aerial observation of the curtilage of a home did not violate the Fourth Amendment, and could form the basis for probable cause to support a warrant to search the curtilage). So long as it is curtilage, a parking patio or carport into which an officer can see from the street is no less entitled to protection from trespass and a warrantless search than a fully enclosed garage.

Finally, Virginia's proposed bright-line rule automatically would grant constitutional rights to those persons with the financial means to afford residences with garages in which to store their vehicles but deprive those persons without such resources of any individualized consideration as to whether the areas in which they store their vehicles qualify as curtilage. See United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 822, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982) ("[T]he most frail cottage in the kingdom is absolutely entitled to the same guarantees of privacy as the most majestic mansion").

IV

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the automobile exception does not permit an officer without a warrant to enter a home or its curtilage in order to search a vehicle therein. We leave for resolution on remand whether Officer Rhodes' warrantless intrusion on the curtilage of Collins' house may have been reasonable on a different basis, such as the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice THOMAS, concurring.

I join the Court's opinion because it correctly resolves the Fourth Amendment question in this case. Notably, the only reason that Collins asked us to review this question is because, if he can prove a violation of the Fourth Amendment, our precedents require the Virginia courts to apply the exclusionary rule and potentially suppress the incriminating evidence against him. I write separately because I have serious doubts about this Court's authority to impose that rule on the States. The assumption that state courts must apply the federal exclusionary rule is legally dubious, and many jurists have complained that it encourages "distort[ions]" in substantive Fourth Amendment law, Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 157, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978) (White, J., dissenting); see also Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 490, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring); Calabresi, The Exclusionary Rule, 26 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 111, 112 (2003).

*1676The Fourth Amendment, as relevant here, protects the people from "unreasonable searches" of "their ... houses." As a general rule, warrantless searches of the curtilage violate this command. At the founding, curtilage was considered part of the "hous[e]" itself. See 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 225 (1769) ("[T]he capital house protects and privileges all its branches and appurtenants, if within the curtilage"). And except in circumstances not present here, house searches required a specific warrant. See W. Cuddihy, The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602-1791, p. 743 (2009) (Cuddihy); Donahue, The Original Fourth Amendment, 83 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1181, 1237-1240 (2016) ; Davies, Recovering the Original Fourth Amendment, 98 Mich. L. Rev. 547, 643-646 (1999). A warrant was required even if the house was being searched for stolen goods or contraband-objects that, unlike cars, are not protected by the Fourth Amendment at all. Id., at 647-650 ; see also Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 150-152, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925) (Taft, C.J.) (discussing founding-era evidence that a search warrant was required when stolen goods and contraband were "concealed in a dwelling house" but not when they were "in course of transportation and concealed in a movable vessel"). Accordingly, the police acted "unreasonabl [y]" when they searched the curtilage of Collins' house without a warrant.1

While those who ratified the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments would agree that a constitutional violation occurred here, they would be deeply confused about the posture of this case and the remedy that Collins is seeking. Historically, the only remedies for unconstitutional searches and seizures were "tort suits" and "self-help." Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. ----, ----, 136 S.Ct. 2056, 2061, 195 L.Ed.2d 400 (2016). The exclusionary rule-the practice of deterring illegal searches and seizures by suppressing evidence at criminal trials-did not exist. No such rule existed in "Roman Law, Napoleonic Law or even the Common Law of England." Burger, Who Will Watch the Watchman? 14 Am. U.L. Rev. 1 (1964). And this Court did not adopt the federal exclusionary rule until the 20th century. See Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914). As late as 1949, nearly two-thirds of the States did not have an exclusionary rule. See Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 29, 69 S.Ct. 1359, 93 L.Ed. 1782 (1949). Those States, as then-Judge Cardozo famously explained, did not understand the logic of a rule that allowed "[t]he criminal ... to go free because the constable has blundered." People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585, 587 (1926).

The Founders would not have understood the logic of the exclusionary rule either. Historically, if evidence was relevant and reliable, its admissibility did not "depend upon the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the mode, by which it [was] obtained." United States v. The La Jeune Eugenie, 26 F.Cas. 832, 843 (No. 15, 551) (C.C.D.Mass.1822) (Story, J.); accord, 1 S. Greenleaf, Evidence § 254a, pp. 825-826 (14th ed. 1883) ("[T]hat ... subjects of evidence may have been ... unlawfully obtained ... is no valid objection to their admissibility if they are pertinent to the issue"); 4 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2183, p. 626 (2d ed. 1923) ("[I]t has long been established that the admissibility of evidence is not affected by the illegality of the *1677means through which the party has been enabled to obtain the evidence" (emphasis deleted)). And the common law sometimes reflected the inverse of the exclusionary rule: The fact that someone turned out to be guilty could justify an illegal seizure. See Gelston v. Hoyt, 3 Wheat. 246, 310, 4 L.Ed. 381 (1818) (Story, J.) ("At common law, any person may at his peril, seize for a forfeiture to the government; and if the government adopt his seizure, and the property is condemned, he will be completely justified"); 2 W. Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown 77 (1721) ("And where a Man arrests another, who is actually guilty of the Crime for which he is arrested, ... he needs not in justifying it, set forth any special Cause of his Suspicion").

Despite this history, the Court concluded in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), that the States must apply the federal exclusionary rule in their own courts. Id., at 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684.2 Mapp suggested that the exclusionary rule was required by the Constitution itself. See, e.g., id., at 657, 81 S.Ct. 1684 ("[T]he exclusionary rule is an essential part of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments"); id., at 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684 ("[E]vidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court"); id., at 655-656, 81 S.Ct. 1684 ("[I]t was ... constitutionally necessary that the exclusion doctrine-an essential part of the right to privacy-be also insisted upon").3 But that suggestion could not withstand even the slightest scrutiny. The exclusionary rule appears nowhere in the Constitution, postdates the founding by more than a century, and contradicts several longstanding principles of the common law. See supra, at 1676 - 1677; Cuddihy 759-760; Amar, Fourth Amendment First Principles, 107 Harv. L. Rev. 757, 786 (1994) ; Kaplan, The Limits of the Exclusionary Rule, 26 Stan. L. Rev. 1027, 1030-1031 (1974).

Recognizing this, the Court has since rejected Mapp 's " '[e]xpansive dicta' " and clarified that the exclusionary rule is not required by the Constitution. Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 237, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011) (quoting Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006) ). Suppression, this Court has explained, is not "a personal constitutional right." United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348, 94 S.Ct. 613, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974) ; accord, *1678Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 486, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976). The Fourth Amendment "says nothing about suppressing evidence," Davis, supra, at 236, 131 S.Ct. 2419, and a prosecutor's "use of fruits of a past unlawful search or seizure 'work[s] no new Fourth Amendment wrong,' " United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984) (quoting Calandra, supra, at 354, 94 S.Ct. 613 ).4 Instead, the exclusionary rule is a "judicially created" doctrine that is "prudential rather than constitutionally mandated." Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 363, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998) ; accord, Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 139, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (2009) ; Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 10, 115 S.Ct. 1185, 131 L.Ed.2d 34 (1995) ; United States v. Janis, 428 U.S. 433, 459-460, 96 S.Ct. 3021, 49 L.Ed.2d 1046 (1976).5

Although the exclusionary rule is not part of the Constitution, this Court has continued to describe it as "federal law" and assume that it applies to the States. Evans, supra ; Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 991, 104 S.Ct. 3424, 82 L.Ed.2d 737 (1984). Yet the Court has never attempted to justify this assumption. If the exclusionary rule is federal law, but is not grounded in the Constitution or a federal statute, then it must be federal common law. See Monaghan, Foreword: Constitutional Common Law, 89 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 10 (1975). As federal common law, however, the exclusionary rule cannot bind the States.

Federal law trumps state law only by virtue of the Supremacy Clause, which makes the "Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties ... the supreme Law of the Land," Art. VI, cl. 2. When the Supremacy Clause refers to "[t]he Laws of the United States made in Pursuance [of the Constitution]," it means federal statutes, not federal common law. Ramsey, The Supremacy Clause, Original Meaning, and Modern Law, 74 Ohio St. L.J. 559, 572-599 (2013) (Ramsey); Clark, Separation of Powers as a Safeguard of Federalism, 79 Texas L. Rev. 1321, 1334-1336, 1338-1367 (2001) (Clark); see also *1679Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 211, 6 L.Ed. 23 (1824) (Marshall, C.J.) ("The appropriate application of that part of the clause which confers ... supremacy on laws ... is to ... the laws of Congress, made in pursuance of the constitution"); Hart, The Relations Between State and Federal Law, 54 Colum. L. Rev. 489, 500 (1954) ( "[T]he supremacy clause is limited to those 'Laws' of the United States which are passed by Congress pursuant to the Constitution"). By referencing laws "made in Pursuance" of the Constitution, the Supremacy Clause incorporates the requirements of Article I, which force Congress to stay within its enumerated powers, § 8, and follow the cumbersome procedures for enacting federal legislation, § 7. See Wyeth v. Levine, 555 U.S. 555, 585-587, 129 S.Ct. 1187, 173 L.Ed.2d 51 (2009) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment); 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1831, pp. 693-694 (1833); Clark 1334. Those procedures-especially the requirement that bills pass the Senate, where the States are represented equally and Senators were originally elected by state legislatures-safeguard federalism by making federal legislation more difficult to pass and more responsive to state interests. See Ramsey 565; Clark 1342-1343. Federal common law bypasses these procedures and would not have been considered the kind of "la[w]" that can bind the States under the Supremacy Clause. See Ramsey 564-565, 568, 574, 581; Jay, Origins of Federal Common Law: Part Two, 133 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1231, 1275 (1985).

True, this Court, without citing the Supremacy Clause, has recognized several "enclaves of federal judge-made law which bind the States." Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398, 426, 84 S.Ct. 923, 11 L.Ed.2d 804 (1964) ; see, e.g., id., at 427-428, 84 S.Ct. 923 (foreign affairs); Hinderlider v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co., 304 U.S. 92, 110, 58 S.Ct. 803, 82 L.Ed. 1202 (1938) (disputes between States); Garrett v. Moore-McCormack Co., 317 U.S. 239, 245, 63 S.Ct. 246, 87 L.Ed. 239 (1942) (admiralty); Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U.S. 363, 366, 63 S.Ct. 573, 87 L.Ed. 838 (1943) (certain rights and obligations of the United States); Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U.S. 448, 456-457, 77 S.Ct. 912, 923, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957) (aspects of federal labor law). To the extent these enclaves are delegations of lawmaking authority from the Constitution or a federal statute, they do not conflict with the original meaning of the Supremacy Clause (though they might be illegitimate for other reasons). See Ramsey 568-569; Grano, Prophylactic Rules in Criminal Procedure: A Question of Article III Legitimacy, 80 Nw. U.L. Rev. 100, 131-132 (1985). To the extent these enclaves are not rooted in the Constitution or a statute, their pre-emptive force is questionable. But that is why this Court has "limited" them to a " 'few' " "narrow areas" where "the authority and duties of the United States as sovereign are intimately involved" or where "the interstate or international nature of the controversy makes it inappropriate for state law to control." Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U.S. 630, 640-641, 101 S.Ct. 2061, 68 L.Ed.2d 500 (1981) (quoting Wheeldin v. Wheeler, 373 U.S. 647, 651, 83 S.Ct. 1441, 10 L.Ed.2d 605 (1963) ). Outside these narrow enclaves, the general rule is that "[t]here is no federal general common law" and "[e]xcept in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by Acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the law of the State." Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938).

These precedents do not support requiring the States to apply the exclusionary rule. As explained, the exclusionary rule *1680is not rooted in the Constitution or a federal statute. This Court has repeatedly rejected the idea that the rule is in the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, expressly or implicitly. See Davis, 564 U.S., at 236, 131 S.Ct. 2419 ; Leon, 468 U.S., at 905-906, 104 S.Ct. 3405 ; cf. Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. ----, ----, 137 S.Ct. 1843, 1857, 198 L.Ed.2d 290 (2017) (explaining that reading implied remedies into the Constitution is "a 'disfavored' judicial activity"). And the exclusionary rule does not implicate any of the special enclaves of federal common law. It does not govern the sovereign duties of the United States or disputes of an interstate or international character. Instead, the rule governs the methods that state police officers use to solve crime and the procedures that state courts use at criminal trials-subjects that the Federal Government generally has no power to regulate. See United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 618, 120 S.Ct. 1740, 146 L.Ed.2d 658 (2000) (explaining that "[t]he regulation" and "vindication" of intrastate crime "has always been the province of the States"); Smith v. Phillips, 455 U.S. 209, 221, 102 S.Ct. 940, 71 L.Ed.2d 78 (1982) ("Federal courts hold no supervisory authority over state judicial proceedings"). These are not areas where federal common law can bind the States.6

In sum, I am skeptical of this Court's authority to impose the exclusionary rule on the States. We have not yet revisited that question in light of our modern precedents, which reject Mapp 's essential premise that the exclusionary rule is required by the Constitution. We should do so.

Justice ALITO, dissenting.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable" searches. What the police did in this case was entirely reasonable. The Court's decision is not.

On the day in question, Officer David Rhodes was standing at the curb of a house where petitioner, Ryan Austin Collins, stayed a couple of nights a week with his girlfriend. From his vantage point on the street, Rhodes saw an object covered with a tarp in the driveway, just a car's length or two from the curb. It is undisputed that Rhodes had probable cause to believe that the object under the tarp was a motorcycle that had been involved a few months earlier in a dangerous highway chase, eluding the police at speeds in excess of 140 mph. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 22; App. to Pet. for Cert. 67. Rhodes also had probable cause to believe that petitioner had been operating the motorcycle1 and that a search of the motorcycle would provide *1681evidence that the motorcycle had been stolen.2

If the motorcycle had been parked at the curb, instead of in the driveway, it is undisputed that Rhodes could have searched it without obtaining a warrant. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 9; Reply Brief 1. Nearly a century ago, this Court held that officers with probable cause may search a motor vehicle without obtaining a warrant. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 153, 155-156, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925). The principal rationale for this so-called automobile or motor-vehicle exception to the warrant requirement is the risk that the vehicle will be moved during the time it takes to obtain a warrant. Id., at 153, 45 S.Ct. 280 ; California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 390-391, 105 S.Ct. 2066, 85 L.Ed.2d 406 (1985). We have also observed that the owner of an automobile has a diminished expectation of privacy in its contents. Id., at 391-393, 105 S.Ct. 2066.

So why does the Court come to the conclusion that Officer Rhodes needed a warrant in this case? Because, in order to reach the motorcycle, he had to walk 30 feet or so up the driveway of the house rented by petitioner's girlfriend, and by doing that, Rhodes invaded the home's "curtilage." Ante, at 1678 - 1679. The Court does not dispute that the motorcycle, when parked in the driveway, was just as mobile as it would have been had it been parked at the curb. Nor does the Court claim that Officer Rhodes's short walk up the driveway did petitioner or his girlfriend any harm. Rhodes did not damage any property or observe anything along the way that he could not have seen from the street. But, the Court insists, Rhodes could not enter the driveway without a warrant, and therefore his search of the motorcycle was unreasonable and the evidence obtained in that search must be suppressed.

An ordinary person of common sense would react to the Court's decision the way Mr. Bumble famously responded when told about a legal rule that did not comport with the reality of everyday life. If that is the law, he exclaimed, "the law is a ass-a idiot." C. Dickens, Oliver Twist 277 (1867).

The Fourth Amendment is neither an "ass" nor an "idiot." Its hallmark is reasonableness, and the Court's strikingly unreasonable decision is based on a misunderstanding of Fourth Amendment basics.

The Fourth Amendment protects "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects." A "house," for Fourth Amendment purposes, is not limited to the structure in which a person lives, but by the same token, it also does not include all the real property surrounding a dwelling. See, e.g., Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 6, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 185 L.Ed.2d 495 (2013) ; United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 300-301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987). Instead, a person's "house" encompasses the dwelling and a circumscribed area of surrounding land that is given the name "curtilage." Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 180, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984). Land outside the curtilage is called an "open field," and a search conducted in that area is not considered a search of a "house" and is therefore not governed by the Fourth Amendment. Ibid. Ascertaining the boundaries of the curtilage thus determines only whether a search is governed by the Fourth Amendment. The concept plays no other role in Fourth Amendment analysis.

*1682In this case, there is no dispute that the search of the motorcycle was governed by the Fourth Amendment, and therefore whether or not it occurred within the curtilage is not of any direct importance. The question before us is not whether there was a Fourth Amendment search but whether the search was reasonable. And the only possible argument as to why it might not be reasonable concerns the need for a warrant. For nearly a century, however, it has been well established that officers do not need a warrant to search a motor vehicle on public streets so long as they have probable cause. Carroll, supra, at 153, 156, 45 S.Ct. 280 ; see also, e.g., Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940, 116 S.Ct. 2485, 135 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1996) (per curiam ); Carney, supra, at 394, 105 S.Ct. 2066 ; South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 367-368, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976) ; Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 50-51, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970). Thus, the issue here is whether there is any good reason why this same rule should not apply when the vehicle is parked in plain view in a driveway just a few feet from the street.

In considering that question, we should ask whether the reasons for the "automobile exception" are any less valid in this new situation. Is the vehicle parked in the driveway any less mobile? Are any greater privacy interests at stake? If the answer to those questions is "no," then the automobile exception should apply. And here, the answer to each question is emphatically "no." The tarp-covered motorcycle parked in the driveway could have been uncovered and ridden away in a matter of seconds. And Officer Rhodes's brief walk up the driveway impaired no real privacy interests.

In this case, the Court uses the curtilage concept in a way that is contrary to our decisions regarding other, exigency-based exceptions to the warrant requirement. Take, for example, the "emergency aid" exception. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006). When officers reasonably believe that a person inside a dwelling has urgent need of assistance, they may cross the curtilage and enter the building without first obtaining a warrant. Id., at 403-404, 126 S.Ct. 1943. The same is true when officers reasonably believe that a person in a dwelling is destroying evidence. See Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 460, 131 S.Ct. 1849, 179 L.Ed.2d 865 (2011). In both of those situations, we ask whether " 'the exigencies of the situation' make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable." Brigham City, supra, at 403, 126 S.Ct. 1943 (quoting Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 394, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978) ). We have not held that the need to cross the curtilage independently necessitates a warrant, and there is no good reason to apply a different rule here.3

*1683It is no answer to this argument that the emergency-aid and destruction-of-evidence exceptions require an inquiry into the practicality of obtaining a warrant in the particular circumstances of the case. Our precedents firmly establish that the motor-vehicle exception, unlike these other exceptions, "has no separate exigency requirement." Maryland v. Dyson, 527 U.S. 465, 466-467, 119 S.Ct. 2013, 144 L.Ed.2d 442 (1999) (per curiam ). It is settled that the mobility of a motor vehicle categorically obviates any need to engage in such a case-specific inquiry. Requiring such an inquiry here would mark a substantial alteration of settled Fourth Amendment law.

This does not mean, however, that a warrant is never needed when officers have probable cause to search a motor vehicle, no matter where the vehicle is located. While a case-specific inquiry regarding exigency would be inconsistent with the rationale of the motor-vehicle exception, a case-specific inquiry regarding the degree of intrusion on privacy is entirely appropriate when the motor vehicle to be searched is located on private property. After all, the ultimate inquiry under the Fourth Amendment is whether a search is reasonable, and that inquiry often turns on the degree of the intrusion on privacy. Thus, contrary to the opinion of the Court, an affirmance in this case would not mean that officers could perform a warrantless search if a motorcycle were located inside a house. See ante, at 1669 - 1670. In that situation, the intrusion on privacy would be far greater than in the present case, where the real effect, if any, is negligible.

I would affirm the decision below and therefore respectfully dissent.