THE NEWEST 

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT – 

THE RIGHT TO MIRANDA 

WARNINGS 

Jacquelyn Kuhens 

Senior Legal Instructor 

Until June 26, 2000, a person who 

was in custody and being subjected to 

police interrogation did not have a 

Constitutional right to be given Miranda

warnings; Miranda warnings were just the 

mechanism by which a state or Federal 

law enforcement officer ensured that the 

subject of his custodial interrogation knew 

what his or her rights were before the 

interrogation began. If a law enforcement 

officer conducted a custodial interview 

without first giving Miranda warnings, it 

was not a Constitutional violation, and so 

the worst that could happen was the 

suppression of the improperly obtained 

statement. Today, because a person in 

custody has a Constitutional right to be 

given his Miranda rights, is it possible, 

even likely, that failure to give a subject 

Miranda rights will serve as the basis for a 

Bivens or Title 42, United States Code, 

Section 1983 civil rights claim? Only time 

will tell. Why did the Rehnquist Supreme 

Court, in an opinion authored by the Chief 

Justice himself, take this momentous step? 

To find the answer, we must look to the 

decision of Dickerson v. United States, 

530 U.S. 428 (June 26, 2000) itself. 

The essence of the Rehnquist 

decision is that a simple voluntariness test 

is too difficult to apply when trying to 

determine whether a statement that is 

taken without the benefit of Miranda 

warnings is reliable enough to be 

presented to a jury. Until the decision in 

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), 

the courts had fluctuated between concerns 

over meeting the requirements of the Fifth 

Amendment (“no person shall be 

compelled in any criminal case to be a 

witness against himself”) and due process 

issues under the Fifth and Fourteenth 

Amendments, which required that no 

confessions should be coerced or obtained 

by overcoming a person’s voluntary free 

will. 

In Miranda, the Supreme Court 

found that custodial interrogations by their 

very nature are coercive, and that in order 

to combat the coercive atmosphere, a 

subject had to be informed, in language 

that he could understand, of four 

fundamental rights: the right to remain 

silent, the act that anything he said could 

be used against him in court, the right to 

have an attorney present 

during questioning, and that one would be 

appointed to represent him prior to any 

questioning if he could not afford to hire 

one. In Dickerson, Chief Justice Rehnquist 

states that Miranda laid down “concrete 

constitutional guidelines for law 

enforcement agencies and courts to 

follow.” 

In his decision in Dickerson, the 

Chief Justice comes to the conclusion that 

the rights set forth in Miranda are 

constitutional in nature based upon the fact 

that the Miranda decision and its two 

companion cases were state cases, not 

Federal; the U.S. Supreme Court does not 

have supervisory jurisdiction over state 

courts, and therefore the decision must 

have been Constitutionally based. The 

Chief Justice states: “Miranda requires 

procedures that will warn a suspect in 

custody of his right to remain silent and 

which will assure the suspect that the 

exercise of that right will be honored.” 

The opinion further states that even if this 

Court would not have issued Miranda in 
the first place, because it is already in 

place, there must be compelling reasons to 

overturn it, and none have been presented. 

Miranda warnings have become such a 

part of our culture that this Court will not 

overturn them, and now they have 

Constitutional stature. 

What is the practical result of 

Dickerson to a Law Enforcement Officer? 

Because of this decision, Law 

Enforcement Officers will need to be even 

more careful when evaluating a situation 

to determine whether, from the perspective 

of the subject, he or she reasonably could 

feel that it was a custodial interview. If the 

answer to that question is yes, then 

Miranda warnings must be given fully and 

properly. If an officer fails to give 

Miranda warnings in a situation that is 

later determined to have required them, 

under the decision issued in Dickerson, 

this would appear to be a violation of the 

subject’s Constitutional rights. Will the 

failure to give Miranda warnings be 

grounds for a Bivens or §1983 action? 

Unfortunately, I believe that the answer, as 

a result of this decision, will be yes.