UNIT: THE JUDICIAL BRANCH and the Supreme Court
Students will be able to:
1. Explain the dual or two separate court systems in the United States.
2. Explain Federal Court Jurisdiction or the kinds of cases that are heard by federal courts.
3. Differentiate between original jurisdiction and appellate jurisdiction.
4. Explain the concept of Judicial Review.
5. Analyze the Supreme Court Case, Marburry v. Madison
6. Compare Supreme Court Jurisdiction with other kinds of jurisdiction.
7. Explain how cases reach the Supreme Court and how the Court operates.
8. Analyze how the decision of the Supreme Court play a major role in either expanding or limiting constitutional civil liberties.
G1. Activity 1. Explain the dual or two separate court systems in the United States.
Magruder’s p. 506 – 507, Civics, pages. 220-221
1. Explain why the founder’s set up a National Judiciary.
2. Describe the structure of the National Judiciary.
3. Why are there two separate court systems in the United States?
G2. Activity 2. Explain Federal Court Jurisdiction or the kinds of cases that are heard by federal courts.
Civics, p. 221. Read the Chart, Cases Heard by Federal Courts. Answer the question , What kinds of federal laws are heard by federal courts?
Magruder’s p. 508. Read the Chart at the top of the page. What cases Come Under Federal Jurisdiction. Answer the question: Why are such cases heard in federal courts instead of state courts?
G3. Activity 3. Differentiate between original jurisdiction and appellate jurisdiction.
Civics, p. 22 / Magruder’s, p. 509
Use a venn diagram to compare and contrast original and appellate jurisdiction.
G4/G5 Activity Explain the concept of Judicial Review. Analyze the Supreme Court Case, Marburry v. Madison.
Magruder’s, p. 517, Civics, p. 225—Define the concept of Judicial Review.
Marburry v. Madison. Magruder’s, p. 518-519; Civics, p. 225-226.
Create a flow chart that shows a sequence of events. Use the flowchart to describe how judicial review evolved and what effects it had on the Supreme Court.
G6/7 Activity. Compare Supreme Court Jurisdiction with other kinds of jurisdiction. Magruder’s p. 519 – 522.
Reading Strategy. Annotation. Take notes while you read about the Supreme Court. Put your notes in outline form:
I. Supreme Court Jurisdiction:
II. How cases reach the Supreme Court
a. Writ of certiorari
b. Certificate
III. How the Court Operates
a. Oral Arguments
b. Briefs
c. The Court In Conference
d. Opinions
i. Majority opinion
ii. Precedents
iii. Concurring opinion
iv. Dissenting Opinion
The Constitution called for the creation of a
federal government with the following three branches, or parts: legislative,
executive, and judiciary. Article I created Congress, the legislative, or
lawmaking, body. Article II established the office of the President, who
executes, or carries out, the laws. Article III created the federal court
system consisting of one Supreme Court and other lower courts.
As with most aspects of the U.S.
Constitution, the meaning of Article III was left open to interpretation. In
1789, shortly after the Constitution was ratified, Congress passed the
Judiciary Act of 1789, which established the federal court system. Congress
created a Supreme Court, three circuit courts, and 13 district courts. There
was one district court for each of the 13 states.
The Constitution did not specify the number
of justices that could be appointed to the Supreme Court. Through the Judiciary
Act, though, Congress provided for a Chief Justice and five Associate Justices.
However, the Constitution and Congress left the scope of the Court's power
undefined. These powers would gradually be defined through the Court's
interpretation of the Constitution in particular cases.
The earliest Chief Justices had very little
impact on the direction of the Supreme Court. But John Marshall, who served
from 1801 to 1835, influenced the action of the Supreme Court in ways still
felt in the United States today. Early in Marshall's term as Chief Justice, a
seemingly insignificant case came before the Supreme Court. However, that case,
Marbury v. Madison, became one of the most important Supreme Court
decisions in United States history.
In November 1800, President John Adams, a
Federalist, lost his bid for reelection to Thomas Jefferson, a Republican. The
Federalists also lost control of Congress in the election. For the few months
before the new President and Congress took office, however, Adams and his
Federalist Party still had control.
During these months, Adams persuaded Congress
to pass a new law, the Judiciary Act of 1801. This act gave Adams the power to
appoint several new federal judges. The Federalists hoped to fill the nation's
courts with people who would be opposed to the policies of the incoming
Republican administration.
Adams was generally successful in this
effort, appointing some 39 new judges. Adams's Secretary of State was to
deliver the commissions, or official documents authorizing the appointments.
The Secretary of State, though, failed to deliver the commissions to three new
justices of the peace before Adams's term of office ended. One of the
commissions was to go to William Marbury.
When Thomas Jefferson became President in
March 1801, he learned of Adams's attempt to pack the court with Federalist
judges. He also discovered the failure to deliver the remaining commissions. To
prevent these Federalists from becoming justices of the peace, Jefferson
instructed his Secretary of State, James Madison, to refuse the appointments.
Marbury went
to the Supreme Court in an attempt to gain his post. He wanted the Court to
issue an order forcing Madison to give Marbury his
commission. The Judiciary Act of 1789 had given the Supreme Court the power to
issue such an order.
In a unanimous decision, written by Justice
Marshall, the Court stated that Marbury, indeed, had
a right to his commission. But, more importantly, the Judiciary Act of 1789 was
unconstitutional. In Marshall's opinion, Congress could not give the Supreme
Court the power to issue an order granting Marbury
his commission. Only the Constitution could, and the document said nothing
about the Supreme Court having the power to issue such an order. Thus, the
Supreme Court could not force Jefferson and Madison to appoint Marbury, because it did not have the power to do so.
While Marbury never
became a justice of the peace, the Court's ruling in Marbury
v. Madison
established a very important precedent. A precedent is a legal decision that
serves as an example in later court cases. Chief Justice Marshall's ruling
interpreted the Constitution to mean that the Supreme Court had the power of
judicial review. That is, the Court had the right to review acts of Congress
and, by extension, actions of the President. If the Court found that a law was
unconstitutional, it could overrule the law. Marshall argued that the
Constitution is the “supreme law of the land” and that the Supreme Court has
the final say over the meaning of the Constitution. He wrote, “lt is emphatically the province
and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
SUPREME COURT CASES CONCERNING CIVIL LIBERTIES
Theme: the United States Supreme Court has played a major role in either expanding or limiting constitutional civil liberties in the United States.
Task: Study the following Supreme Court Cases that have had an impact on civil liberties in the United States. For each case identified:
· Discuss the facts of the case
· Identify a specific constitutional civil liberty issue addressed by the Supreme Court
· Discuss how the decision of the Supreme Court either expanded or limited a specific constitutional civil liberty in the United States.
Plessy v. Fergusson (1896)
Turn of the Century Race Relations
African Americans faced not only formal discrimination but
also informal rules and customs, called racial etiquette that regulated
relationships between whites and blacks.
Usually, these customs belittled and humiliated African Americans,
enforcing their second-class status. For
example, blacks and white never shook hands, since shaking hands would have
implied equality. Blacks also had to yield
the sidewalk to white pedestrians, and black men always had to remove their
hats for whites.
Violence African Americans and others who did
not follow the racial etiquette could face severe punishment or death. All too often, blacks who were accused of
violating the etiquette were lynched.
Between 1882 and 1892, more than 1,400 African American men and women
were shot, burned, or hanged without trial in the South. Lynching peaked in the 1880s and 1890s but
continued well into the 20th century.
Plessy V. Ferguson
Origins
of the Case: in 1892, Homer Plessy took a seat in the “Whites Only” car of a train and
refused to move. He was arrested, tried
and convicted in the District Court of New Orleans for breaking Louisiana’s
segregation law. Plessy
appealed, claiming that he had been denied equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court handed down its decision in
May 18, 1896.
The
Ruling: The Court ruled
that separate-but-equal facilities for blacks and whites did not violate the
Constitution.
Legal
Reasoning: Plessy
claimed that segregation violated his right to equal protection under the
law. Moreover he claimed that, being “of
mixed descent,” he was entitled to “every recognition, right, privilege and
immunity secured to the citizens of the United States of the white race.”
Justice Henry B. Brown, writing for the majority ruled: “The object of the Fourteenth Amendment
was…undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the
law, but…it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon
color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a
commingling of the two races upon term unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting and even requiring, their
separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not
necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other.”
In truth, segregation laws did perpetrate an unequal and
inferior status for African Americans.
Justice John Harlan understood this fact and dissented from the majority
opinion. He wrote, “in respect of civil
rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”
He condemned the majority for letting the “seeds of race hate…be planted
under the sanction of law.” He also
warned that “The thin disguise of ‘equal’ accommodations…will not mislead
anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.”
Why
it mattered: In the decades
following the Civil War, Southern state legislatures passed laws that aimed to
limit civil rights for African Americans.
The Black Codes of the 1860s, and later Jim Crow laws, were intended to
deprive African Americans of their newly won political and social rights
granted during Reconstruction.
Plessy
was one of several Supreme Court cases brought by African Americans to protect
their rights against segregation. In
these cases, the Court regularly ignored the Fourteenth Amendment and upheld
state laws that denied blacks their rights.
Plessy was the mot
important of these cases because the Court used it to establish the separate
but equal doctrine.
As a result, city and state governments across the South,
and in some other states, maintained their segregation laws for more than half
of the 20th century. These
laws limited African Americans’ access to most public facilities, including
restaurants, schools, and hospitals.
Without exception, the facilities reserved for whites were superior to
those reserved for nonwhites. Signs
reading “Colored Only” and “Whites Only” served as
constant reminders that facilities in segregated societies were separate but
not equal.
Historical
Impact: It took many
decades to abolish legal segregation.
During the first half of the 20th century, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) led the legal fight
to overturn Plessy.
Although they won a few cases over the years, it was not until 1954 in
Brown v. Board of Education that the Court overturned any part of Plessy. In that case,
the Supreme Court said that separate-but-equal was unconstitutional in public
education, but it did not completely overturn the separate-but-equal doctrine.
In later year, the Court did overturn the separate-but-equal
doctrine, and it used the Brown decision to do so. For example, in 1955 Rose Parks was convicted
for violating a Montgomery, Alabama, law for segregating seating on buses. A federal court overturned the conviction,
finding such segregation unconstitutional.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld without comment
the lower court’s decision. In doing so
in this and similar cases, the Court signaled that the reasoning behind Plessy no longer applied.
5.
What
role does the Supreme Court play in either expanding or limiting constitutional
civil liberties in the United States?
SCHENCK v. UNITED STATES (1919)
ORIGINS OF THE
CASE Charles Schenck, an official of the U.S.
Socialist Party, distributed leaflets that called the draft a “deed against humanity”
and compared conscription to slavery, urging conscripts to “assert your
rights.” Schenck was convicted of sedition and
sentenced to prison, but he argued that the conviction, punishment, and even
the law itself violated his right to free speech. The Supreme Court agreed to
hear his appeal.
The
Ruling: A unanimous court upheld Schenck’s
conviction, stating that under wartime conditions, the words in the leaflets
were not protected by the right to free speech.
LEGAL REASONING
The Supreme
Court’s opinion in the Schenck case,
written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., has become famous as a guide for
how the First Amendment defines the right of free speech. Holmes wrote:
The question in every case is whether the words used are used in
such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the
substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Justice
Holmes noted that “in ordinary times” the First Amendment might have protected Schenck, but when a nation is at war many things that might
be said in time of peace . . . will not be endured.” The analogy that Holmes
used to explain why Schenck could be punished for his
words has become probably the best-known observation ever made about free speech:
“Protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘Fire!’ in
a theatre and causing a panic.”
1.
Describe the origin of the case.
2.
What was the Court’s ruling in the cas
3. What was Justice Holmes’s main argument in the Court’s opinion in Schenck
6. What role does the Supreme Court play in
either expanding or limiting constitutional civil liberties in the United
States?
World
War II: Korematsu
v. United States (1944)
Origins
of the Case: Following the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1041, U.S. military officials
argued that Japanese Americans posed a threat to the nations
security. Based on recommendations from
the military, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which
gave military officials the power to limit the civil rights of Japanese
Americans. Military authorities began by
setting a curfew for Japanese Americans.
Later they forced Japanese Americans from their homes and moved them
into detention camps. Fred Korematsu was convicted of defying the military order to
leave his home. At the urging of the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Korematsu
appealed that conviction.
The
Ruling: The Court upheld Korematsu’s conviction and argued that military necessity
made internment constitutional.
Legal
Reasoning
Executive Order 9066 was clearly aimed at one group of
people—Japanese Americans. Korematsu argued that this order was unconstitutional
because it was based on race. Writing
for the Court majority, Justice Hugo Black agreed “that all legal restrictions
which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect.” However, in
this case, he said, the restrictions were based on “a military imperative’ and
not “group punishment based on antagonism to those of Japanese origin.” As such, Justice Black stated that the restructions were constitutional.
Justice Frank Murphy, however, dissented—he opposed the
majority. He believed that military
necessity was merely an excuse that could not conceal the racism at the heart
of the restriction.
Two other justices also dissented, but Korematsu’s
conviction stood.
Why
it mattered
About 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment
camps during World War II. Many had to
sell their businesses and homes at great loss.
Thousands were forced to give up their possessions. In the internment camps, Japanese Americans
lived in a prison-like setting under constant guard.
The Court ruled that these government actions did not
violate people’s rights because the restrictions were based on military
necessity rather than on race. But the
government treated German Americans and Italian Americans much
differently. In those instances, the
government identified potentially disloyal people but did not harass the people
it believed to be loyal. By contrast,
the government refused to make distinctions between loyal and potentially disloyal
Japanese Americans.
Historical Impact
In the end, internment of Japanese Americans because a
national embarrassment. In 1976,
President Gerald R. Ford repealed Executive Order 9066.
Similarly, the Courts decision in Korematsu
became an embarrassing example of court-sanctioned racism often compared to the
decisions on Dred Scott (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
In the early 1980s, a scholar conducting research obtained copies of
government documents related to the Hirabayashi and Korematsu cases. The
documents showed that the army had lied to the Court in the 1940s. Japanese Americans had not posed any security
threat. Korematsu’s
conviction as overturned in 1984. Hirabayashi’s
conviction was overturned in 1986. In
1988, Congressed passed a law ordering reparations ($20,000) payments to
surviving Japanese Americans, who had been detained in the camp.
Answer the following questions about the case.
1. Describe the
origins of the case.
2. What was Korematsu’s argument?
3. How did the Court
majority explain their decision? (Justice Hugo Black)
4. What did the
dissenting opinion express? (Justice
Frank Murphy?
5. Why did this
matter?
6. What was the
historical impact?
What role does the Supreme Court play in
either expanding or limiting constitutional civil liberties in the United
States?
Perhaps no other case decided by the Court in
the 20th century has had so profound an effect on the social fabric of America
as Brown
v. Board
of Education of Topeka. By the end of World War II, dramatic
changes in American race relations were already underway. The integration of
labor unions in the 1930s under the eye of the Fair Employment Practices
Commission and the desegregation of the armed forces by President Truman in
1948 marked major steps toward racial integration.
The legal framework on which segregation
rested—formally established in 1896 by the Court's Plessy
v. Ferguson
decision—was itself being dismantled. Challenged repeatedly by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the doctrine of
“separate but equal” was beginning to crack. Beginning in 1938, the Supreme
Court had, in a number of cases, struck down laws where
segregated facilities proved to be “demonstrably unequal.” The Court ordered
the law schools at the University of Missouri and the University of Texas to be
integrated in Missouri
ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 1938, and Sweatt
v. Painter,
1950. Neither case had made the frontal assault needed to overturn the Plessy standard. However, the 1950s brought a new wave of
challenges to official segregation by the NAACP and other groups.
Linda Brown, an eight-year-old
African-American girl, had been denied permission to attend an elementary
school only five blocks from her home in Topeka, Kansas. School officials
refused to register her at the nearby school, assigning her instead to a school
for nonwhite students some 21 blocks from her home. Separate elementary schools
for whites and nonwhites were maintained by the Board of Education in Topeka.
Linda Brown's parents filed a lawsuit to force the schools to admit her to the
nearby, but segregated, school for white students.
The central question addressed to the Court
involved the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. “Does segregation
of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the
physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the
children…of equal educational opportunities?” In short, the Court was asked to
determine whether the segregation of schools was at all constitutional.
For Linda Brown: Led by Thurgood Marshall, an NAACP litigator who
would be appointed to the Court in 1967, Brown's attorneys argued that the
operation of separate schools, based on race, was harmful to African-American
children. Extensive testimony was provided to support the contention that legal
segregation resulted in both fundamentally unequal education and low
self-esteem among minority students. The Brown family lawyers argued that
segregation by law implied that African Americans were inherently inferior to
whites. For these reasons they asked the Court to strike down segregation under
the law.
For the Board of Education: Attorneys for Topeka argued that the separate schools for nonwhites in
Topeka were equal in every way, and were in complete conformity with the Plessy
standard. Buildings, the courses of study offered, and the quality of teachers
were completely comparable. In fact, because some federal funds for Native
Americans only applied at the nonwhite schools, some programs for minority
children were actually better than those offered at the schools for whites.
They pointed to the Plessy decision of 1896 to support segregation
and argued that they had in good faith created “equal facilities,” even though
races were segregated. Furthermore, they argued, discrimination by race did not
harm children.
For a unanimous Court (9-0), Chief Justice
Warren wrote in his first and probably most significant decision, “[S]egregation [in public education] is a denial of the equal
protection of the laws.” Accepting the arguments put forward by the plaintiffs,
Warren declared: “To separate [some children] from others of similar age and
qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority
as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a
way unlikely ever to be undone.”
The Court quoted the Kansas court, which had
held that “Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a
detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has
the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually
interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro
group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn.
Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the
educational and mental development of negro children
and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school….”
Summing up, Warren wrote: “We conclude that
in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no
place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal…. segregation [in
public education] is a denial of the equal protection of the laws.”
The Brown decision did more than reverse the Plessy
doctrine of “separate but equal.” It reversed centuries of segregationist
practice and thought in America. For that reason, the Brown
decision is seen as a transforming event—the birth of a political and social
revolution. In a later case called Brown II (Warren had suggested two decisions—the first
dealing with the constitutionality of segregation and the second with the
implementation of the decision), the Court directed an end to school
segregation by race “with all deliberate speed.” The Brown
decision became the cornerstone of the social justice movement of the 1950s and
1960s. It finally brought the spirit of the 14th Amendment into practice, more
than three-quarters of a century after that amendment had been passed.
What role does the Supreme Court play in
either expanding or limiting constitutional civil liberties in the United
States?
Gideon v. Wainwright: Accused
Citizen Fights for Rights
In 1961 Clarence Gideon was charged with breaking and entering a Florida pool hall. When brought to trial in a Florida court, he pleaded innocent. However, he could not afford a lawyer, and the court refused to provide him with one. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.
Clarence Gideon was determined to prove that his rights had been violated. As he later wrote, “I always believed that the [main] reason of trial…was to reach the truth. My trial was far from the truth.”
Gideon spent hours in the prison library studying law books. He read that the right to have a lawyer is stated in the Sixth Amendment. However, books about previous cases revealed disagreement over whether the right applied in state courts. Believing that it should apply in any court, Gideon wrote a letter asking the Supreme Court to hear his case.
The issue of whether state courts should provide lawyers to represent the poor had already come before the Court several times. The Court had ruled that this right to a lawyer applies only to special circumstances. Gideon’s situation did not seem special, but the Court agreed to re-examine the issue.
When the case came before the Court on January 14, 1963, all of the justices concluded that no court should deny a citizen the right to have a lawyer because he or she is too poor to afford one. It was a victory not only for Gideon but also for thousands of other Americans, who would now be guaranteed the right to have a lawyer if they were ever accused of a crime.
In winning his case before the Court, Gideon also won the
right to a new trial in Florida. This
time the court paid for a lawyer to represent him, and he was found not
guilty. In learning about his rights and
taking action to defend them, Gideon stands as an example that every citizen’s
voice can be heard.
While reading
underline the sections of text that can help you answer the following
questions:
1. What “proof” does Gideon offer to support
his innocence?
2. In what three ways, according to Gideon,
are defendants harmed by not having an attorney?
3. What attitude does Gideon show toward the
law and the legal system?
4. What point is Gideon trying to make in the
last paragraph of his letter?
Gideon v. Wainwright: The Right to an Attorney
Clarence Gideon was an uneducated man who had to defend himself in a Florida court because he could not afford an attorney and the trial judge refused to provide one at public expense. Here, Gideon writes from prison to the attorney assigned to handle his Supreme Court appeal. Fourteen months after this letter, the Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that every defendant has a right to an attorney.
Primary Source
Document
On June 3rd 1961 I was a arrested for the crime I am now doing time on. I was charged with Breaking & Entering to comitt a misdemeanor and was convicted in a trial August 4th 1961 [and] sentenced to State Prison August 27th 1961.
This charged growed out of gambling…I worked in this place and did run a Poker game there…I did not break into this building nor did I have to [because] I had the keys to the building…The State witness Cook who was supposed to identify me. Had a bad police record and the Court would not let me bring that out. Nor that one time I had at the point of a pistal made him stop beating a girl[.]
I always believed that the primarily reason of a trial in a court of law was to reach the truth. My trial was far from the truth. One day when I was being arraigned [brought to court to be formally charged] I seen two trials of two different men tried without attorneys. One hour from the time they started they had two juries out and fifteen minutes later they were found guilty and sentenced. Is this a fair trial? This is common practiced through most of this state…I am an electrician here [in prison] and one of my fellow workers has two years for drunk and resisting arrest. Most city Police courts would give a citizen a twenty-five dollar fine for the same charge he was tried without an attorney and convicted…
There was not a crime committed in my case and I don’t feel like I had a fair trial. If I had a attorney [,] he could brought out all these things in my trial.
When I was arrested I was put in solitary confinement and I was not allowed the papers not to use the telephone or write to everyone I should. I did get a speedy arraignment and…was allow more time to try and obtain a attorney[,] which I could not do. You know about the rest of my trial…
I hope that [this letter] may help you in preparing this case. I am sorry I could not write better[.] I have done the best I could.
I have no illusions about the law and courts or the people who involved in them. I have read the complete history of law ever since the Romans first started writing them down and[,] before[,] of the laws of religions. I believe that each era finds a improvement in the law[.] Each year brings something new for the benefit of mankind. Maybe this will be one of those small steps forward…
How does the Supreme Court decision affect
civil liberties?
What role does the Supreme Court play in
either expanding or limiting constitutional civil liberties in the United
States?
Miranda v Arizona,
1966
The Courts decision in Escobed v. Illinois, 1964 held that a confession cannot be used against a defendant if it was obtained by police who refused to allow the defendant to see his attorney and did not tell him that he had a right to refuse to answer their questions.
In a truly historic decision, the Court refined the Escobedo holding in Miranda v. Arizona, 1966. A mentally retarded man, Ernest Miranda, had been convicted of kidnapping and rape. Ten days after the crime, the victim picked Miranda out of a police lineup. After two hours of questioning, during which the police did not tell him of his rights, Miranda confessed.
The Supreme Court struck down Miranda’s conviction. More importantly, the Court said that it would no longer uphold convictions in any cases in which suspects had not been told of their constitutional rights before police questioning. It thus laid down the Miranda Rule. Under the rule, before police may question a suspect, that person must be:
1. Told of his or her right to remain silent;
2. Warned that anything he or she says can be used in court;
3. Informed of the right to have an attorney present during questioning;
4. Told that if he or she is unable to hire an attorney, one will be provided at public expense.
5. Told that he or she may bring police questioning to an end at any time.
The Miranda Rule has been in force for 40 years now (and made famous by countless televisions dramas over that period.) As the Court put it in Dickerson v. United States 2000, the rule “has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture.”
The Supreme Court is still refining the rule on a case-by-case basis. Most often the rule is closely followed. But there are exceptions. Thus, the Court has held that an undercover police officer posing as a prisoner does not have to tell a cell made of his Miranda rights before prompting him to talk about a murder, “Illinois v. Perkins, 1990.
Missouri v. Seibert, 2004, centered on what lately had become fairly common police practice: two-step interrogations also known as “rehearsed confessions.” Here, police officers had questioned Patrice Seibert, drawing out details of the fire she had set to cover up the murder of her son. Then, she was told of her Miranda rights—and questioned again. That second round was taped, and she was asked questions based on the incriminating statements she had made in the first—un-taped, unwarned—round. She confessed again.
The Supreme Court found that her confession had been coerced and so was invalid. It was struck down the two-step practice, saying that it threatened the very purpose of Miranda.
The Miranda Rule has always been controversial. Critics say that it “puts criminals back on the streets.” Others applaud the rule, however. They hold that criminal law enforcement is most effective when it relies on independently secured evidence, rather than on confessions gained by questionable tactics from defendants who do not have the help of a lawyer.
How does the Supreme Court interpret the 5th
Amendment in Miranda v Arizona?
What role does the Supreme Court play in
either expanding or limiting constitutional civil liberties in the United
States?
