At this year’s PJP event in March, the moot court considered expanding the “public safety exception” to reading Miranda rights in terrorism cases. I authored the hypothetical for that moot and you can watch the oral argument here. Since then, the Wall Street Journal obtained an FBI memorandum delineating circumstances in which its agents can interrogate terror suspects without advising them of their Miranda rights. There have been three types of reactions to the memo. Many on the Left see it as the gutting of Miranda. “With a swoop of a pen — more than nine years removed from the 9/11 attacks — Barack Obama has done more to erode Miranda than any right-wing politician could have dreamed of achieving,” wrote Glenn Greenwald in Slate. Many on the Right, who think the warnings cause terrorist suspects to clam up and deny interrogators crucial intelligence, see it as a blow for national security. Then there is a third camp that thinks this is much ado about nothing.After reading over the memo, I confess, I’m solidly in the third camp.
