1 gen 1966 anni - Miranda v. Arizona

Descrizione:

Warren Court: The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953–1969), which expanded the Constitution’s promise of equality and civil rights. It issued landmark decisions in the areas of civil rights, criminal rights, reproductive freedom, and separation of church and state.


Backlash against liberalism found one of its primary targets in the U.S. Supreme Court, which had become a powerful ally of the rights revolution. The landmark civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) triggered a larger judicial revolution. After Brown, the Court increasingly agreed to hear human rights and civil liberties cases — as opposed to its previous focus on property-related suits. Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former Republican governor of California who was appointed to the bench by President Eisenhower in 1953, the Court robustly advocated civil rights and liberties from 1954 to 1969.

Right-wing activists fiercely opposed the Warren Court, which they accused of “legislating from the bench” and contributing to social breakdown. Every category of crime was up in the 1970s, with murder rates doubled since the 1950s and a 76 percent increase in burglary and theft between 1967 and 1976. Stoked by a media fixation on “crime,” conservatives lamented the Supreme Court’s rulings that people who are arrested have a constitutional right to counsel (1963, 1964) and, in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), that arrestees have to be informed by police of their right to remain silent. The Court also issued decisions that relaxed restrictions on pornography. First in Roth v. United States (1957) and then in Miller v. California (1972), the Court attempted to balance freedom of expression with rules outlining the kind of obscenity that could be legally banned. However, neither ruling slowed the proliferation of pornographic magazines, films, and live shows. Conservatives found these decisions especially distasteful, since the Court had also ruled that religious ritual of any kind in public schools — including prayers and Bible reading — violated the constitutional separation of church and state. To many religious Americans, the Court had taken the side of immorality over Christian values.


There was no known link between the increase in crime and Supreme Court decisions, given a myriad of other social factors, income inequality, enhanced statistical record-keeping, increasing drug use, and the proliferation of guns. But when many Americans looked at their cities in the 1970s, they saw pornographic theaters, X-rated bookstores, and rising crime rates. Where, they wondered, was law and order? Sensational crimes had always grabbed headlines, but now “crime” itself preoccupied politicians, the media, and the public.

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