In September 2005, John Roberts was confirmed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.1 The Chief Justice’s ascendancy marked a concerted effort to promote consensus among the Justices and enhance the Court’s institutional legitimacy.2 The Chief Justice’s strategy has sought to maximize the number of unanimous decisions reached by the Court no matter the narrowness of the holding,3 an approach that has generated both praise4 and criticism.5 Last Term, in Caniglia v. Strom,6 the Court continued this strategy in favor of narrow unanimous decisions when it declined to expand the scope of the community caretaking exception7 it recognized decades ago in Cady v. Dombrowski.8 An aligned Court held that Cady’s logic did not extend beyond the motor-vehicle context to permit the warrantless searches of homes,9 an uncomplicated determination certain to be celebrated by privacy advocates and originalists alike. Although narrow unanimous decisions can fail to advance doctrine significantly, Caniglia embodies key virtues of unanimity: it provides lower courts with clear guidance while still allowing Justices to articulate judicial philosophies and policy preferences.
In August 2015, Edward Caniglia brought a handgun from the bedroom to the dining room and instructed his wife to “shoot [him] now and get it over with” during a marital dispute.10 Caniglia’s wife instead left their home to stay in a hotel for the night.11 The next morning, Caniglia’s wife called the police and requested a welfare check on Caniglia.12 Speaking with the responding officers, Caniglia corroborated his wife’s account of their argument but rejected the suggestion that he was suicidal.13 The officers reached a different conclusion: convinced Caniglia might be a risk to himself or others, officers called an ambulance to transport Caniglia to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.14 After Caniglia left for the hospital, officers went inside the home and, without a warrant, seized two of Caniglia’s firearms.15
While his firearms were still under police custody, Caniglia filed suit against the City of Cranston, Rhode Island; its police chief; and the responding police officers in the District Court of Rhode Island.16 Caniglia alleged a slew of state and federal law violations arising from his interaction with the officers, his transportation to the hospital for psychiatric observation, and the eventual seizure of the firearms inside his home.17 Caniglia’s claims included three brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of his Second, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.18 Both Caniglia and the City of Cranston filed cross-motions for summary judgment.19
The district court granted the City’s motions for summary judgment on all counts except Caniglia’s due process claim.20 Addressing the Fourth Amendment challenge, Judge McConnell determined that Caniglia’s rights were not violated because the officers’ decision to send him to the hospital and remove his firearms was motivated by a reasonable belief that the Caniglias were in crisis.21 Emphasizing that Caniglia’s wife was “afraid and worried about her husband,”22 Judge McConnell concluded that the officers did not need to leave the weapons in the Caniglia home because, generally, officers are not obligated to “select the least intrusive means of fulfilling community caretaking responsibilities.”23 The court did not consider whether the officers’ conduct was permissible under exigent circumstances doctrine, which allows warrantless searches in certain time-sensitive circumstances, because the City, in its defense, instead raised qualified immunity and the community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment’s general warrant requirement.24
The First Circuit affirmed.25 Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Selya26 held that the community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement encompassed officer conduct on private property.27 Judge Selya drew on Cady — which recognized such an exception in the context of a warrantless search of an impounded motor vehicle28 — to consider the reach of the community caretaking doctrine.29 Though Cady explicitly stated that there was a “constitutional difference between searches of and seizures from houses and similar structures and from vehicles,”30 Judge Selya determined that the doctrine — meant to provide officers, as “master[s] of all emergencies,” the latitude to act when confronted with danger that necessitates prompt action — can apply in situations that do not involve motor vehicles.31 He explained that although the community caretaking exception “is not a free pass,”32 the officers involved in Caniglia’s case could have reasonably determined that Caniglia’s mental state presented an immediate threat of injury33 and accordingly removed firearms from the home to prevent a potential future injury.34
The Supreme Court reversed and remanded.35 Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Thomas held that warrantless searches and seizures of homes exceed the authority of police officers pursuant to any so-called community caretaking duties.36 Justice Thomas’s reasoning began with precedent that established the constitutionality of warrantless searches that were permissible under common law or exigent circumstances.37 Justice Thomas assessed Cady, which recognized that police officers who patrol public rights of way regularly assume “community caretaking functions” unrelated to criminal law.38 Justice Thomas rebuked the First Circuit’s interpretation of the community caretaking exception, explaining that while officers can conduct warrantless searches of private property under exigent conditions or if their conduct would have been permissible for a private citizen under common law,39 Cady underscored the “constitutional difference” between vehicles and homes.40 The Court determined that such a “constitutional difference” made inappropriate the lower courts’ application of Cady’s logic to warrantless searches of homes.41 To support Cady’s distinction between vehicles and homes, Justice Thomas noted that Cady acknowledged police officers’ community caretaking functions in the context of rendering aid to motorists on public highways.42 Cady, then, recognized that police officers can perform functions unrelated to law enforcement, but the decision did not constitute “an open-ended license to perform [those functions] anywhere.”43
Chief Justice Roberts concurred and was joined by Justice Breyer. The Chief Justice wrote to underscore that, to him, the Court’s decision in Caniglia was consistent with its holding in Brigham City v. Stuart.44 In Brigham City, the Court acknowledged that the role of officers extended beyond rendering first aid and encompassed preventing violence and reestablishing peace.45 With Brigham City in mind, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that Caniglia did not stand for the proposition that police officers need to obtain a warrant to enter a home to assist a person who is seriously injured or threatened with serious injury.46
Justice Alito wrote separately to explain his view of the Court’s holding and “highlight some important questions that the [Caniglia] Court does not decide.”47 Justice Alito first agreed with the Court’s rejection of a standalone community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement, insisting that the Cady Court “merely used the phrase ‘community caretaking’ in passing.”48 Discussing the questions left unanswered by Caniglia, Justice Alito noted that the Court had not decided whether Fourth Amendment case law grounded in the criminal context always applies to searches and seizures arising from non–law enforcement activities.49 The Court also did not address the validity of state laws that permit emergency seizures to facilitate psychiatric care, nor did it address the constitutionality of state “red flag” laws, which allow officers to seize firearms to prevent suicide or harm to others.50 The general constitutionality of warrantless searches of homes to determine if a person needs medical care was also unaddressed by Caniglia.51 Because of the “important real-world problem” of elderly people who fall in their homes and are unable to seek aid, Justice Alito suggested that states should adopt procedures to issue warrants in such cases.52
Justice Kavanaugh also concurred. He argued that precedent allows warrantless entry into homes when officers are “reasonably trying to prevent a potential suicide or to help an elderly person who . . . may have fallen.”53 Justice Kavanaugh noted that the Fourth Amendment’s core tenet is reasonableness and, accordingly, that precedent carves out various exceptions to the standard warrant requirement.54 One such exception is recognized by exigent circumstances doctrine, which permits warrantless entries into homes when officers believe on “an objectively reasonable basis” that an occupant has been or is in danger of being seriously injured.55 Though the officers in Caniglia did not rely on this doctrine to justify their conduct, Justice Kavanaugh outlined the doctrine’s application to two emergency aid scenarios.56 He suggested that officers can enter homes without a warrant if they are responding to a call from a person expressing suicidal thoughts or if they are conducting a wellness check on an elderly person.57 Emphasizing the magnitude of annual deaths from suicide and falls,58 Justice Kavanaugh argued that, under the Fourth Amendment, officers need not “stand idly outside” a home when they have an objectively reasonable basis to think an occupant is injured or threatened with injury.59
The Court’s doctrinal answer to the community caretaking exception’s scope was relatively unremarkable: it resolved a circuit split60 in favor of precedent that acknowledges the special status of private homes in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.61 Caniglia, however, represents more than an example of the Court resisting its tendency to recognize new exceptions to the warrant requirement62 — joined by every Justice, the Court’s opinion in Caniglia achieved the Roberts Court’s preferred unanimity. By speaking with one voice on an issue that implicates core privacy rights, the Caniglia Court furthered the Roberts Court’s pursuit of increased legitimacy and authority through unanimity. The concurring Justices outlined doctrinal and pragmatic considerations that further enriched Caniglia without undermining the Court’s clarity or collegiality. Caniglia thus reflects the ability of narrow unanimous decisions to appropriately balance the need for judicial legitimacy with the benefits of judicial transparency.
The transition between the Rehnquist Court and the Roberts Court marked a shift in Court politics and priorities, as Chief Justice Roberts sought to rehabilitate the Court’s reputation as divisive and overly ideological.63 With an eye toward enhancing the Court’s legitimacy, the Chief Justice focused on fostering “unanimity and collegiality” by establishing consensus on narrow questions of less controversy.64 The strategy was nominally successful, ushering in a wave of unanimous decisions65: over half of the decisions during Chief Justice Roberts’s full first term were unanimous,66 up from only twenty-one percent of the decisions issued during Chief Justice Rehnquist’s last term.67 The Roberts Court’s preference for unanimous decisions has continued in the years since68: forty-three percent of 2020 Term decisions were unanimous.69
As the Roberts Court has pursued enhanced legitimacy and authority through unanimous decisions on narrower questions, the Court simultaneously has issued an increasing number of concurring opinions.70 During the Court’s most recent term, nearly sixty percent of the Court’s unanimous decisions had at least one concurrence, elaborating on views not addressed in the main opinion.71 A similar phenomenon appears in earlier Roberts Court decisions. For example, the concurring Justices in NLRB v. Noel Canning72 ventilated pragmatic concerns that arose from the Court’s opinion. The Noel Canning Court unanimously held that although President Obama could appoint officials during a Senate recess, he had not made the appointments at issue during a proper recess.73 Concurring with the judgment, Justice Scalia outlined his concern that the Court had “swe[pt] away the key textual limitations on the recess-appointment power” in a manner that would turn it into a “weapon to be wielded by future Presidents against future Senates.”74 Though the Justices adopted divergent reasoning to assess the permissibility of the recess appointments in question, it was the Court’s unanimity that dominated news coverage of the decision.75 The media’s focus on the Court’s consensus furthered the Chief Justice’s strategy to build institutional legitimacy through unanimity.76 The different perspectives adopted by the Noel Canning opinion itself and by the concurring Justices embodied the type of ideological debate that enhances the judiciary and makes its decisions more transparent to the public. Other Roberts Court decisions follow the same pattern of unanimous decisions addressing relatively narrow questions, coupled with concurrences that build upon, qualify, or underscore the Court’s holding.77
Given the Roberts Court’s tendency to issue narrow unanimous decisions with concurrences, Caniglia was hardly an outlier. The entire bench endorsed Justice Thomas’s brief, three-page opinion that soundly rejected the First Circuit’s formulation of a “community caretaking” exception.78 The certified question in Caniglia was decidedly narrow, addressing only “[w]hether the ‘community caretaking’ exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement extends to the home.”79 The Court declined to address whether it would have found the same officer conduct unconstitutional had the case been argued under a recognized exception to the warrant requirement, nor did the Court define the scope of conduct that falls within an officer’s community caretaking role.80
The concurring Justices in Caniglia then outlined their own doctrinal positions and policy preferences beyond the narrow question decided by the Court. The concurrences of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito and Kavanaugh each raised new propositions and pragmatic concerns.81 Chief Justice Roberts’s concurrence clarified that Brigham City still allows law enforcement officers to enter homes without a warrant in order to render aid to an injured occupant.82 In response to perceived doctrinal ambiguity around the constitutionality of warrantless searches, Justice Alito suggested that states implement procedures to issue warrants to facilitate welfare checks.83 Justice Kavanaugh adopted a more doctrinal focus, writing separately to analyze emergency aid hypotheticals under Court precedent and to explain how certain scenarios might be assessed under Fourth Amendment doctrine.84
By proceeding in this manner, Caniglia captures the virtues of the Roberts Court’s preference for unanimity, even when consensus is reached through narrow decisions and multiple supplemental concurrences. Unanimous decisions facilitate lower court compliance because consensus signals certainty and firmness.85 Unanimity also generates popular support and increases the Court’s institutional credibility.86 Importantly, unanimity can signal civility between Justices and promote confidence in the Court’s ability to neutrally interpret and apply law.87 For their part, concurrences can allow Justices to outline their judicial philosophy and policy preferences without jeopardizing the clarity and authority derived from the Court’s consensus.88 While concurrences have been characterized as confusing89 and harmful to the Court’s authority,90 they offer visibility into the views held by members of an institution that has been labeled “antidemocratic.”91 Indeed, when Justices pen concurrences that elaborate upon their views, the Roberts Court’s preference for unanimity achieves an ideal balance between authority and judicial transparency.
Narrow opinions have been criticized as sometimes offering “almost no precedential effect.”92 The limited precedential impact of certain narrow decisions stems from ideological diversity among Justices: the more numerous and diverse the group of Justices joining an opinion, the narrower the basis for consensus.93 Therefore, when full consensus is reached, unanimity can come at the cost of thorough direction to guide lower courts.94
However, the doctrinal and philosophical differences often explored in concurring opinions can provide ample direction.95 In Caniglia, Justice Alito’s concurrence included a practical recommendation for states: enact new warrant procedures to avoid litigation over warrantless entries into homes pursuant to welfare checks.96 Justice Kavanaugh’s analysis of emergency aid scenarios97 charted new doctrinal paths that may be followed by both litigants crafting arguments and lower courts seeking to apply Caniglia beyond its specific facts.98 Caniglia, then, showcased the ability of narrow unanimous decisions to provide policy insights and refine doctrine when Justices write separately.
Caniglia put on full display many of the most commendable attributes of Court decisions. United on the narrow question presented to it, the Court spoke clearly: there is no standalone community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.99 In Caniglia at least, achieving consensus did not deprive the judiciary of practical and doctrinal guidance, as the concurring Justices offered perspectives that will likely inform decisionmaking by lower courts and state legislators alike. Without depriving the judiciary and other interested parties of guidance, Caniglia projects the stability and collegiality necessary to improve the Court’s reputation100 — a particularly important image to maintain after a series of politically turbulent Senate confirmation hearings that have eroded the Court’s legitimacy among the public.101 Narrow unanimous decisions are no silver bullet to remedy the Court’s institutional concerns, particularly when divided and controversial decisions still dominate its docket. Yet in the case of Caniglia, the Roberts Court proved its point: on the way to resolidifying its authority, one voice beats many.