Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 33 (2000)

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460

DICKERSON v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

case exhibits the same fundamental flaw as does Miranda when deprived (as it has been) of its original (implausible) pretension to announcement of what the Constitution itself required. That is, although the Due Process Clause may well prohibit punishment based on judicial vindictiveness, the Constitution by no means vests in the courts "any general power to prescribe particular devices 'in order to assure the absence of such a motivation,' " 395 U. S., at 741 (Black, J., dissenting). Justice Black surely had the right idea when he derided the Court's requirement as "pure legislation if there ever was legislation," ibid., although in truth Pearce's rule pales as a legislative achievement when compared to the detailed code promulgated in Miranda.1

The foregoing demonstrates that, petitioner's and the United States' suggestions to the contrary notwithstanding, what the Court did in Miranda (assuming, as later cases hold, that Miranda went beyond what the Constitution actually requires) is in fact extraordinary. That the Court has, on rare and recent occasion, repeated the mistake does not transform error into truth, but illustrates the potential for future mischief that the error entails. Where the Constitution has wished to lodge in one of the branches of the Federal Government some limited power to supplement its guarantees, it has said so. See Amdt. 14, § 5 ("The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article"). The power with which the Court would endow itself under a "prophylactic" justification for Miranda goes far beyond what it has permitted Congress to do under authority of that text. Whereas we have in-1 As for Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U. S. 625 (1986), upon which petitioner and the United States also rely, in that case we extended to the Sixth Amendment, postindictment, context the Miranda-based prophylactic rule of Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981), that the police cannot initiate interrogation after counsel has been requested. I think it less a separate instance of claimed judicial power to impose constitutional prophylaxis than a direct, logic-driven consequence of Miranda itself.

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