Together Apart: Freshman Colloquium

The Proper Invocation of One's Miranda Rights

Leslie (Chien) Huang

Abstract

Being an international student, everything I’ve known about American criminal law has come from TV shows like Criminal Minds or How to Get Away with Murder. However, I took the opportunity to learn more about criminal law in the United States through the GE seminar “Language, Law, and Literature.” We responded to the 2008 Ainsworth article on the invocation of one’s Miranda rights, which I initially wrongly assumed to be a simple matter. In fact, there are very specific linguistic requirements that have to be met for arrestees to properly invoke their rights. However, these specific requirements and the power imbalance between law enforcement personnel and the citizen make it difficult for arrestees to actually invoke their rights. Meanwhile, there are a vast amount of ways for an arrestee to waive their Miranda rights. The exposure to this new knowledge has pushed me to reconsider everything I’ve learned through entertainment media and question how the current legal system can be made more just.

Open PDF

This page has paths:

This page has tags:

This page references: