Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-2001
Abstract
Over the years, Miranda v. Arizona1 has been criticized both for going too far2 and for not going far enough.3 Nevertheless, on the basis of talks with many criminal procedure professors in the sixteen months between the time a panel of the Fourth Circuit upheld a statute (18 U.S.C. § 3501) purporting to "overrule" Miranda and a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court overturned that ruling in the case of Dickerson v. United States,4 I am convinced that most criminal procedure professors wanted the Supreme Court to do what it did-"reaffirm" Miranda. This is not surprising. As Professor Grano once observed, "a person need only attend academic conferences on criminal procedure to discover how discrete and insular 'conservatives' are in academia."5 However, I think all the many professors teaching criminal procedure realized that we would be in much greater demand if the Fourth Circuit's ruling were to be upheld by the Supreme Court-if the centerpiece of the Warren Court's revolution in American criminal procedure were to be eradicated by the Rehnquist Court. For in such an event the resulting confusion would have been enormous-and we would have been popping up on radio and television in much the way all those "election law specialists" did during the protracted 2000 presidential election.
Recommended Citation
Kamisar, Yale. "Miranda Thirty-Five Years Later: A Close Look at the Majority and Dissenting Opinions in Dickerson." Ariz. St. L. J. 33, no. 2 (2001): 387-428.
Included in
Criminal Procedure Commons, Fourteenth Amendment Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons