Case Studies
Chapter 1: History, Structure, and Content of the United States Constitution
Case 1
John Q. Public of New Hampshire was a member of the Convention of Delegates of the People of the State of New Hampshire in 1778. The delegates had gathered to discuss ratification of the United States Constitution, drafted in 1787. If they decided to ratify the document, they would be the ninth state to do so, making the Constitution the law of the land.
Public, who had fought in the Revolutionary War, was skeptical of conferring broad powers on the federal government. He wanted the states to retain the balance of power and was concerned that New Hampshire would not have enough representation in the new legislative body. However, he also realized that the current government was insufficient to protect the interests of the new republic.
While a central government existed under the current government, it lacked the power to tax, regulate commerce, or pass laws governing domestic affairs. A stronger government was clearly needed, but Public remained leery of concentrated power. He had studied the new Constitution thoroughly, as well as the writings of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in support of the Constitution. The separation of powers among the proposed federal legislative, executive, and judicial branches appealed to Public, as he felt that it placed an important check on federal authority. However, he had also absorbed the arguments against ratification.
At the convention, delegates argued back and forth over whether to ratify the Constitution. Public found himself persuaded that ratifying the Constitution was the best way to ensure that the ideals he had fought for in the Revolutionary War would be preserved. He voted in favor of ratification, and on June 21, 1778, the Constitution became the law of the United States.
Questions
Case 2
Perhaps the most famous Supreme Court decision of all time, Miranda v. Arizona instituted the famous Miranda warnings known to everyone who has ever watched a police procedural drama. By explicitly warning suspects about their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and their right to an attorney upon their arrest and during custodial interrogations, Miranda changed the face of law enforcement. The 1966 decision infuriated members of Congress, who thought that it unnecessarily tied the hands of law enforcement.
Two years later, Congress passed 18 U.S.C. § 3501 in an effort to overturn Miranda. President Johnson signed the bill, known as the “Crime Bill,” into law. Section 3501 instructed federal judges to admit confessions made without Miranda warnings, so long as the confessions were made voluntarily. The statute applied only to federal cases. Under § 3501, Fifth Amendment safeguards were not completely overturned, but the absence of Miranda safeguards did not automatically render statements inadmissible.
A challenge to § 3501 was made by Charles Dickerson, a 27-year-old man who had confessed to FBI agents that he had been involved in a bank robbery in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1997. The FBI agents had not read him his Miranda rights before obtaining his confession. Dickerson sued to suppress the use of his statements against him in court. His case was heard by the Fourth Circuit. In ruling against him, the court reasoned that § 3501 made Miranda warnings unnecessary in federal cases. Dickerson appealed the ruling and his case was heard by the Supreme Court.
Questions
Case 3
One of the fiercest debates in contemporary U.S. politics centers on illegal immigration. In April 2010, the debate exploded with the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, a controversial measure designed to identify and ultimately deport illegal aliens. Under the law, police officers in Arizona are required to demand documentation from anyone they suspect of being an illegal alien. The suspected illegal alien does not have to be suspected of being engaged in any illegal activity at the time. Those unable to produce documentation and who are found to be in the United States illegally will be detained, prosecuted, and deported.
The statute also made it a crime for legal immigrants to be caught without papers. Should they be stopped without documentation, they will be guilty of a misdemeanor and can face jail time. While other countries have long had laws requiring residents to carry identification, SB 1070 is the first measure of its kind in the United States.
This law has proven highly controversial because it is perceived to target the Latino population of Arizona. Despite Governor Jan Brewer’s insistence that police officers have been trained to use methods other than racial profiling to target potential illegal immigrants, groups have staged protests and called for outright boycotts of the state.
The Obama administration has protested the statute vigorously as being racially motivated and hostile to citizens and legal residents of Latino origin. The Justice Department also filed a complaint against Arizona in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of key provisions of the law. In July 2010, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked those provisions, putting them on hold days before the law was to go into effect.
Questions
Case 4
Officer Steven Price was a police officer at the Sometown Police Department. In recent months, the number of drug-related incidents in Sometown had increased dramatically. The week before, a high school student had died of an overdose. The citizens of Sometown were distraught, and the incident was getting nonstop attention in the Sometown Crier and the nightly news. The district attorney had called on the police department to crack down on the problem.
While the police were eager to address the situation, they did not have a list of suspects. The general assumption around the department was that the guilty parties were black men between the ages of 18 and 34. They did not have facts to support this assumption. In a briefing to discuss strategy, one of the officers suggested bringing every black man in for questioning. While many police officers spoke against such a strategy, police were still determined to target black men in their investigation, whether or not they had probable cause for doing so.
In order to net as many of the drug dealers as possible, police officers were instructed to increase traffic stops for black men fitting this age range. Sometown Heights, a poor neighborhood, was home to much of Sometown’s minority population, and so police decided to focus their efforts there.
Officer Price was uncomfortable with this practice and urged his fellow officers to use other methods to detain the suspects. “Solid police work will solve this problem,” he said to his partner, Officer Jones. “We do not need to resort to pulling people over for no reason to net the drug dealers.”
While Officer Price did not engage in the practice, over the next couple of weeks, police arrested a number of young black men without cause. In addition to editorials about how the Sometown Police Department has not solved the drug problem, the Sometown Crier now carried complaints of racism by the Sometown Police Department.
Questions
Case 5
During a stationhouse interrogation about a double murder in Michigan, a police sergeant threatened to put Robert Williams in jail. Williams then made statements to the police implicating him in the crimes, and the sergeant then read him his Miranda warnings. Williams waived his rights and then proceeded to make more incriminating statements. Prior to his trial, Williams sought to have his statements suppressed, but the state court and the appeals court declined his petition. Williams was convicted of murder.
After his conviction, Williams filed a petition in federal court, arguing that his Miranda rights had been violated and that his statements should be suppressed. The district court ruled in his favor and also ruled that the statements Williams made after he had been read his Miranda warnings should be suppressed, as they were the fruits of the earlier interrogation.
The court of appeals affirmed this ruling and rejected an earlier precedent, set in Stone v. Powell (1976) that once Fourth Amendment claims had been heard and decided in state court they could not be heard again in federal court. The Supreme Court decided to hear Williams’ case in order to settle the question.
In Withrow v. Williams (1993), the Supreme Court affirmed Miranda safeguards as a “fundamental right” and declined to extend the precedent in Stone to apply to Miranda. Declining to hear such claims in federal court would not lessen the workload in federal courts, and so the Court did not rule that appeals based on Miranda could not be heard in federal court.
Questions