About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

94 Nw. U. L. Rev. 983 (1999-2000)
Constitutionalism without Courts

handle is hein.journals/illlr94 and id is 993 raw text is: Copyright 2000 by Northwestern University School of Law Printed in U.S.A. Northwestern University Law Review Vol. 94, No. 3 Book Review CONSTITUTIONALISM WITHOUT COURTS? TAKING THE CONSTITUTION AWAY FROM THE COURTS. By Mark Tushnet. Princeton University Press, 1999. Joan L. Larsen* I. INTRODUCTION In 1966, the Supreme Court decided a dispute between Ernesto Miranda and the State of Arizona.! In that case, Miranda claimed that the confession he had given to the police was obtained in violation of his right against self- incrimination as guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court agreed, and issued a ruling that gave rise to the now-famous Miranda warnings, which are standard in every police department across the country, and which have become so in- grained in our popular culture through the medium of television that every schoolchild in America could probably recite them verbatim. But the Miranda story does not end so simply. Law enforcement offi- cials were predictably upset by the Court's new ruling, which portended to dramatically alter the way they conducted criminal investigations, and meant that even an inadvertent failure to issue the warnings would render a confes- sion inadmissible in court. Congress was upset too; and shortly after the Court announced Miranda, Congress passed a statute that sought to overturn the Court's ruling. That statute, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3501, directs federal courts to admit into evidence all confessions that are voluntary, whether or not the Miranda warnings were read to the suspects in question. For years this statute was ignored, and Miranda warnings remained the ultimate test of the admissibility of criminal confessions. But in 1999, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit resurrected § 3501 and held that the statute's voluntariness test, not Miranda, was the appro- * Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Michigan Law School. I would like to thank Lisa Bressman, Ronald Mann, Adam Pritchard, and Adrian Vermeule for their invaluable comments on ear- lier drafts of this Review. 1 Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most