Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 23 (2000)

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450

DICKERSON v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

made it unacceptable as a matter of straightforward constitutional interpretation in the Marbury tradition—is its palpable hostility toward the act of confession per se, rather than toward what the Constitution abhors, compelled confession. See United States v. Washington, 431 U. S. 181, 187 (1977) ("[F]ar from being prohibited by the Constitution, admissions of guilt by wrongdoers, if not coerced, are inherently desirable"). The Constitution is not, unlike the Miranda majority, offended by a criminal's commendable qualm of conscience or fortunate fit of stupidity. Cf. Min-nick v. Mississippi, 498 U. S. 146, 166-167 (1990) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

For these reasons, and others more than adequately developed in the Miranda dissents and in the subsequent works of the decision's many critics, any conclusion that a violation of the Miranda rules necessarily amounts to a violation of the privilege against compelled self-incrimination can claim no support in history, precedent, or common sense, and as a result would at least presumptively be worth reconsidering even at this late date. But that is unnecessary, since the Court has (thankfully) long since abandoned the notion that failure to comply with Miranda's rules is itself a violation of the Constitution.

II

As the Court today acknowledges, since Miranda we have explicitly, and repeatedly, interpreted that decision as having announced, not the circumstances in which custodial interrogation runs afoul of the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment, but rather only "prophylactic" rules that go beyond the right against compelled self-incrimination. Of course the seeds of this "prophylactic" interpretation of Miranda were present in the decision itself. See Miranda, 384 U. S., at 439 (discussing the "necessity for procedures which assure that the [suspect] is accorded his privilege"); id., at 447 ("[u]nless a proper limitation upon custodial interrogation is achieved— such as these decisions will advance—there can be no assur-

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