The Criminal Procedure Political Connection: Miranda Before and After

Liva Baker's book on the "crime, law and politics" surrounding the Miranda case opens with a detailed account of the crime committed by Miranda and closes with his death in 1976 in a barroom fight as his assailant is being given his Miranda rights. In between, using the Miranda case as a centerpiece, Liva Baker, who earlier wrote a biography of Felix Frankfurter,' has woven a tapestry of the social and political forces and events preceding and following that case. Into that skein, she was wound the life stories of the chief participants; the broad social trends; a paralegal course on criminal procedure; and an analysis of how the political, legal, and economic elites manipulate the legal system to their benefit. Baker shows the connections and interrelationships between the lives and fortunes of individuals and the power struggles in which they (largely men) engage. She is able to relate-and this is certainly her major object-individual cases to the political system from which they emerge. More particularly, the book leads to a better understanding of the current assault on the exclusionary rule and the way the rule became the focus of political campaigns of the 1970s. The work is marvelously nontechnical, yet answers almost every question one is likely to pose about the workings of the United States Supreme Court. Along the way, Baker provides both recent historical background and legal analysis of criminal-procedure cases emanating from the Warren and Burger Courts. Her main emphasis is on the political machinations surrounding these decisions, especially their attempted manipulation for political purposes. Although by no means pathbreaking in placing law in a political setting, or