Cite as: 512 U. S. 452 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
States v. Gouveia, 467 U. S. 180, 188 (1984), and before proceedings are initiated a suspect in a criminal investigation has no constitutional right to the assistance of counsel. Nevertheless, we held in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 469-473 (1966), that a suspect subject to custodial interrogation has the right to consult with an attorney and to have counsel present during questioning, and that the police must explain this right to him before questioning begins. The right to counsel established in Miranda was one of a "series of recommended 'procedural safeguards' . . . [that] were not themselves rights protected by the Constitution but were instead measures to insure that the right against compulsory self-incrimination was protected." Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 443-444 (1974); see U. S. Const., Amdt. 5 ("No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself").*
*We have never had occasion to consider whether the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, or the attendant right to counsel during custodial interrogation, applies of its own force to the military, and we need not do so here. The President, exercising his authority to prescribe procedures for military criminal proceedings, see Art. 36(a), UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. § 836(a), has decreed that statements obtained in violation of the Self-Incrimination Clause are generally not admissible at trials by court-martial. Mil. Rules Evid. 304(a) and (c)(3). Because the Court of Military Appeals has held that our cases construing the Fifth Amendment right to counsel apply to military interrogations and control the admissibility of evidence at trials by court-martial, see, e. g., United States v. Mc-Laren, 38 M. J. 112, 115 (1993); United States v. Applewhite, 23 M. J. 196, 198 (1987), and the parties do not contest this point, we proceed on the assumption that our precedents apply to courts-martial just as they apply to state and federal criminal prosecutions.
We also note that the Government has not sought to rely in this case on 18 U. S. C. § 3501, "the statute governing the admissibility of confessions in federal prosecutions," United States v. Alvarez-Sanchez, 511 U. S. 350, 351 (1994), and we therefore decline the invitation of some amici to consider it. See Brief for Washington Legal Foundation et al. as Amici Curiae 7-14. Although we will consider arguments raised only in an amicus brief, see Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 300 (1989) (plurality opinion), we are reluctant to do so when the issue is one of first impression involving
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