The unintended effect of the Writs of Assistance was that it angered colonists who felt they were being searched without a warrant.
The Writs of assistance were a general search warrant that it was issued by the superior provincial court to assist the British government in enforcing trade and navigation laws. It allowed officers to search any house for smuggled goods without any specification of which house or goods where being inspected.
After those effects surfaced, lawyer James Otis issued before the Superior Court of Massachusetts that those warrants were illegal and that: “appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English lawbook.”
