What Supreme Court case established the requirement for obtaining a search warrant?

The case that fundamentally established the requirement for obtaining a search warrant is Katz v. United States. This landmark Supreme Court decision determined that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not just places, meaning that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in certain situations. Katz involved the FBI's warrantless wiretapping of a phone booth used by the defendant, which the Court ruled constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment.

The Court confirmed that the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before conducting searches of a person's private conversations or property, emphasizing the necessity of safeguarding individual privacy rights against arbitrary government intrusion. This case set a significant precedent in defining the standard for search and seizure, which continues to inform law enforcement practices today.

The other options, while important cases within search and seizure law, do not primarily address the general requirement for obtaining a search warrant. Miranda v. Arizona focuses on the rights of individuals during police interrogation, New Jersey v. T.L.O. deals with the search of students in a school environment, and Illinois v. Gates established a totality-of-the-circumstances standard for determining probable cause in warrant applications. Each of these cases contributes to the understanding of search and seizure but does not establish the foundational requirement for obtaining a search warrant