“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.” — Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Recently, in an unsigned order issued without an explanation, and in direct defiance of the plain language of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States permitted federal police to stop persons in public and demand to see proof of lawful presence here — and in the absence of that proof, to arrest them.

The Fourth Amendment is the most radical of the first 10. It recognized that personal privacy — the right to be left alone — is a natural right and government may only interfere with it upon its obtaining a warrant from a judge based on probable cause of crime about the person or place named in the warrant; a warrant that specifically describes the place to be searched or the person or things to be seized.

Because privacy is a natural right, when it is challenged, no person need prove or disprove anything by showing papers. The burden of substantiating the challenge to privacy is 100% with the government.

Now, back to the Supreme Court’s decision in its shadow docket.

The shadow docket — a creation of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts — is deeply frustrating and profoundly disturbing to the judicial, academic, legal and law enforcement communities as it often produces orders without reasons. Stop/go. Yes/no. We’ll tell you why and how at a later date.

That’s what happened in a challenge to mass arrests by ICE agents in Los Angeles earlier this summer. Persons arrested without arrest warrants — arrested collectively because of the colors of their skin, the sounds of their voices, the places of their lawful assemblies — challenged their arrests. A federal district court judge invalidated the arrests and ordered ICE to follow the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. A federal appellate court upheld the order.

Recently, the Supreme Court — in one of its stop/go, yes/no rulings — reversed the two lower courts without giving reasons. In an irrelevant and embarrassing concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh opined that if you are lawfully in the U.S., you have nothing to fear, just show your papers.

Show your papers!? That requirement undermines the truism that our rights are natural. It shifts the government’s burden when interfering with free movement from the government’s ability to demonstrate criminality to the stopped person’s ability to disprove it on the spot. And such a command is — as President Ronald Reagan once commented — the hallmark of totalitarian regimes.

These are dark days in America. A popular young man is publicly murdered on national media because of his articulate expression of his political views. Two state legislators are murdered in the middle of the night in their homes by a madman pretending to be a cop.

And now this — the Supreme Court for the first time in the modern era lets police demand to see your papers.