Miranda's Waning Protections by White Welsh S.;

Author:White, Welsh S.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

CHAPTER 9

Miranda’s Limitations

One of the most interesting aspects of the Dickerson decision was the Court's response to the request that Miranda v. Arizona1 be overruled. In a revealing portion of the majority opinion, Justice Rehnquist seemed to indicate that the Court would not “agree with Miranda’s reasoning and resulting rule” if it “were…addressing the issue in the first instance.”2 In rejecting the constitutional attack on Miranda, however, he stated that “principles of stare decisis weigh heavily against overruling it now.”3

But if a majority of the Court disagreed with Miranda’s constitutional holding, why should it reject an opportunity to overrule or at least modify the Warren Court's landmark decision? As the majority itself acknowledged,4 stare decisis has not been an impediment to overruling other constitutional decisions. Did Dickerson refuse to consider overruling Miranda’s constitutional holding simply because, as Justice Rehnquist put it, the Miranda “warnings have become a part of our national culture”?5 Or, as another commentator has asserted, should Miranda’s survival more appropriately be attributed to the fact that the Court considered the constitutionality of the statute overruling Miranda “at the very moment when the Court's interest in protecting its constitutional turf against Congressional incursions was at a peak unmatched in recent years”?6

Identifying the precise reasons for Dickerson’s rejection of the constitutional assault on Miranda is, of course, impossible. In my judgment, however, a major reason for the Court's disinclination to overrule Miranda relates to Miranda’s limitations. By the time the Court confronted the issue in Dickerson, it had become obvious that, regardless of what the Warren Court may have intended, Miranda’s safeguards today provide very limited restraints on police interrogators.

To some extent, of course, Miranda’s limitations may be attributed to post-Miranda decisions. As I explained in chapter 6, decisions by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts substantially weakened Miranda’s protections.7 Indeed, as interpreted by the present Court, Miranda essentially provides suspects with two safeguards: first, the suspect will be informed of his four Miranda rights prior to police questioning; and, second, through invoking either his right to remain silent or his right to have an attorney present at questioning, the suspect has at least a theoretical opportunity to either forestall police questioning entirely or to bring it to a halt at any point after it commences.

These safeguards are not insignificant. As I indicated in chapter 7, there is probably a small group of suspects who choose to remain silent as a result of hearing the Miranda warnings. In addition, the warnings may lead some suspects to invoke their rights at some point during the interrogation, thereby reducing the extent of their incriminating statements to the police. In the great majority of cases, however, the Miranda safeguards do not provide significant restraints on police interrogating suspects.

For constitutional purposes, of course, the question is whether Miranda’s safeguards combined with the Court's other constitutional restrictions on interrogation practices provide a constitutionally appropriate accommodation between promoting law enforcement's interest in obtaining reliable incriminating statements and protecting suspects from pernicious interrogation practices. In addressing this

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