Chapter 1 examines the steps that are attendant to custodial interrogation in the United States. Many of these steps, and what they entail, are not readily known to the general public. Hence, to contextualize the corpus, Chapter 1 starts with a brief overview of what constitutes custodial interrogation, leading to a description of the federal court system that reviewed the cases. This examination will provide insights into the inner workings of the federal courts and the role of the judges in the federal court system. Chapter 1 also provides a brief overview of the common grounds for appeals in cases reviewing potential Miranda violations, as well as definitions for the terminology often referred to in the chapters. The chapter concludes with a brief analysis on the three key themes of the book: the legal foundation of police interrogation, the strategic features of invoking counsel in custodial settings, and tackling police interrogation reform in the United States.

Chapter 2 explores how law enforcement’s ability to engage discursively with suspects and other lay persons is limited by the law. Judicial rulings regarding suspects’ rights during custodial interrogation, such as the right to counsel, provide insights into how the United States federal court system, led by the main court of the land the Supreme Court of the United States, views suspects’ constitutional rights, on the one hand, and the societal benefit of police officers being able to conduct criminal investigations, on the other. The chapter discusses the evolution of the right to counsel in the federal courts, since the seminal Miranda v. Arizona (1966) ruling, and the insights this history provides in framing the law as a facilitator or, alternatively, a deterrent to suspects invoking their right to counsel, prior to the onset of custodial interrogation. This analysis of opinions from the Court, circuit courts, district courts, and a few military courts, that make up the book’s corpus, will shed light on how judges have viewed the role of police in society, through time, and whether some in the judiciary consider the Miranda ruling as overreaching in its ‘intended’ constitutional protections.