Dworkin (1978) defends a basic "moral reading" of the U.S. Constitution as the "idea that individuals can have rights against the state that are prior to the rights created by explicit legislation." He argues that law contains moral principles as well as rules and that these moral principles cannot be traced to any explicit legislative enactment. He argues that an examination of each legal case will find, in addition to technical legal rules, particular moral principles that play an important role in the judicial decisionmaking process. The literature provides at least two categories or patterns of such moral justification in judicial decisionmaking: that of "Judge Hercules" or "Judge Herbert." Judge Hercules searches for pre-existing moral principles within the law that give one party a "right" over the other, while Judge Herbert takes a utilitarian approach in balancing economic, political, and other criteria in addition to legal and moral values in awarding one party a decision over the other. This article argues that the Rehnquist Court is a "Herbert" in its moral justification of fourth amendment decisions in the 1986 to 1994 terms. In more than 78 percent of all cases, utilitarian moral justifications were used by justices to argue for their fourth amendment decisions. In approximately one-third of utilitarian moral justifications, arguments were made for significant modifications to existing precedents of the Court under the fourth amendment. An assessment of the defendant's immorality as a "druggie" was linked with a "Herbert" reading of fourth amendment values. 72 references