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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.  Any assump-

tion that evidence sufficient to support a magis-

trate's disinterested determination to issue a

search warrant will justify the officers in mak-

ing a search without a warrant would reduce the

Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's

homes secure only in the discretion of police

officers. . . . 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.34

In other words, the Fourth Amendment places a judicial

officer between the police and the citizenry "so as to

prevent the police from acting as judges in their own

cause."35

It should be noted here that the Supreme Court has

never insisted upon a search warrant in each and every

search situation.36   If a homeowner voluntarily consents to

a search, for example, the police do not have to obtain a

warrant.  And in emergency or "exigent circumstances" the

police do not have to apply for a search warrant.  Thus,

if a policeman is in an automobile chase with a bank rob-

ber and the suspect suddenly turns off the public highway

onto a private farm road, the policeman can continue the

chase even though he has no judicial warrant for being on

private land.  Absent consent or exigent circumstances,

however, the general rule is that the police must apply

for a search warrant from the judicial branch prior to the

invasion of any home or business.37

Some state legislatures have attempted to help the

executive branch bypass the judiciary by vesting judicial

powers in police agents.  The New Hampshire legislature,

for example, vested the warrant-issuing power within the

office of the justice of the peace.  Such laws, by them-

selves, were very common, but the New Hampshire law proved

to be controversial because it contained almost no limita-

tion on who could hold the title of "justice of the

peace."  When that legal procedure was challenged in the

case of Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971),38 questioning by

the trial judge and defense attorneys revealed that police