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Law and LanguageCurrent Legal Issues Volume 15$
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Law and Language: Current Legal Issues Volume 15

Michael Freeman and Fiona Smith

Print publication date: 2013

Print ISBN-13: 9780199673667

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2013

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673667.001.0001

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Silence, Speech, and the Paradox of the Right to Remain Silent in American Police Interrogation

Silence, Speech, and the Paradox of the Right to Remain Silent in American Police Interrogation

Chapter:
(p.371) 22 Silence, Speech, and the Paradox of the Right to Remain Silent in American Police Interrogation
Source:
Law and Language
Author(s):

Janet Ainsworth

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673667.003.0201

In contemporary jurisprudence, the right to remain silent has been valorized as foundational to human dignity and to human expressive freedom. The right to remain silent is also likely the criminal law doctrine most recognized by the American general public. In fact, given the worldwide marketing of American movies and television dramas, the Miranda warning, beginning, ‘You have the right to remain silent’, may well be the single most widely known principle of criminal law in the world. Yet, despite its deep roots in American legal history and its entrenched status in current popular culture, the right to silence as articulated in Miranda has been subject to a barrage of judicial limitations, qualifications, and exceptions in recent years, to the point where it currently can scarcely be said to provide any meaningful constraint on police interrogation at all. This chapter begins by tracing the origins of the Miranda rule. It then discusses remaining silent as an exercise of the right to remain silent; Berghuis v. Thompkins and its consequences for the right to remain silent; speaking to claim the right to remain silent; and whether Miranda warnings are still relevant.

Keywords:   Miranda rights, Miranda warnings, criminal law, Berghuis v. Thompkins, police interrogation

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