'Could Miranda be overruled?' Kamisar asks at Law School

By Linda Myers

"You have the right to remain silent. " Anyone who watches "NYPD Blue" or "Homicide" reruns probably can recite the rest by heart. The words that police are required to use when they inform suspects in custody of their legal rights, often called Miranda rights, were at the center of a talk by Yale Kamisar at the Law School March 15.

Kamisar, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and a long-time scholar of Miranda-related court cases, recounted how those rights have been under fire from certain constituencies ever since the Supreme Court's historic ruling, under Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1966, that led law enforcers to inform suspects of their legal rights before questioning them. The ruling was intended to protect against coerced confessions.

Now the Supreme Court is about to revisit the Miranda decision and determine the constitutionality of a statute that was part of the "Crime Bill" enacted by Congress in 1968. That statute sought to reverse the initial Miranda ruling but was never applied by law enforcers, largely because no one expected it to hold up in court.

The conservative Rehnquist-led Supreme Court will vote soon on whether the never-enforced statute is null and void -- as most people believe it to be -- or whether Congress indeed has the power to overrule the court. Will the court decide that Congress can overrule Miranda by simply passing a statute, asked Yale Kamisar to a packed house in MacDonald Moot Court Room. Or will it rule, as he hopes, that the only legal way for the legislature to overthrow Miranda is through a constitutional amendment? Or will it actually overthrow Miranda, a slim but not entirely impossible outcome, given the lack of sympathy for the ruling by some court members?

Kamisar described how the 1968 statute was put forward by a bloc of conservative democrats from Southern states who wanted to make an "in your face" symbolic gesture of protest against the Warren court ruling. At issue today is whether the rights guaranteed by Miranda are merely "prophylactic" or rights inherent in the constitution. Kamisar discussed the many layers of the various U.S. court decisions on defendants' rights and predicted that the Supreme Court's vote is likely to be a close one, probably 5-4, in one direction or the other.