"Playing God": 5 to 4 (the Supreme Court and the police).

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: Inbau, Fred E.
• Date: 22 June 1999

(THE SUPREME COURT AND THE POLICE)(*)

Over the past several years, whenever the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision that imposed a new restriction upon the police, many persons were heard to say: "If only the police, prosecuting attorneys, the organized bar, the state courts, or the legislatures had taken the initiative and done something about the situation there would have been no need for the Court to step in." To some of us this always seemed to be a naive [sic] explanation of the motivation of a majority of the Justices.

Recent developments have established, to my satisfaction, the fact that the Court's majority has been determined all along to do its own policing of the police regardless of what any other group or any other branch of government might do by way of attempting to solve the law enforcement problems about which the Court has been so concerned. The Court's one man majority was going to continue to "play God". And "play God" it did in its June, 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436).

For the past several years an American Law Institute committee, composed of lawyers, law teachers, and judges, with divergent viewpoints upon the subject, has devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort toward the formulation of a proposed tentative legislative code prescribing...