Reading Room Document

Fourth Amendment Issues Raised by Chemical Weapons Inspection Regime

The inspection regime to be created by the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction and by the proposed Chemical Weapons Implementation Act, under which inspections of facilities that produce certain chemicals would occur, absent exigent circumstances, only after the United States Government obtained the consent of the owner or operator of the facility, an administrative warrant, or a criminal search warrant, is consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/19971/download.

September 10, 1996