Miranda Warning

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?"

So serious. So intense. These five items must be read to anyone questioned by the police, thanks to Miranda v. Arizona. Remember, the key here is to protect people from police abuse, people who may not know or remember their rights. Or are freaking out because they're in a tiny room being questioned by a bunch of detectives.

Want to sound like a legal eagle? If you are being read this warning, you are being "Mirandized."

Coercion

The act of being bullied, forced, persuaded, or even tricked into saying or doing something.

"I didn't mean to put my tongue on the metal flag pole last winter, but Bobby coerced me into it. It was a triple dog dare."

Custody

In legal terms, custody means being somewhere you can't leave. And we don't mean being glued to the TV during Episode 6 of Game of Thrones. We mean being held by the authorities.

Chief Justice Warren noted that being in custody has its own set of psychological pressures, even if the police are treating you just fine.

Self-incrimination

Admitting that you did something. "Yes, I took the last cronut" is self-incrimination. "The last cronut looked so tempting; how could I not take it?" would also be self-incrimination. So would be saying you thought it was a good idea to cast Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka.

Remember, according to your Fifth Amendment rights, you never have to admit that you did something. While that might sound like it helps criminals go free, the point is to protect people against police who might go a little overboard during the interrogation process if the usual Q&A wasn't getting them the info they needed.

Important note: someone else saying that you took the last cronut (say, a witness on the stand at court) is not self-incrimination, and the Constitution doesn't protect you from others telling the court what they saw you do. That's kinda the whole point of a trial.

Opinion

No, not like those "fact vs. opinion" worksheets you had to do in elementary school. We're talking about the fancy shmancy legal term here.

Whenever the Supreme Court comes to a decision, the Chief Justice, if he or she is in the majority, usually writes the Court's Opinion. This Opinion is a thorough, often lengthy statement that announces the decision. It usually includes a summary of the facts, a reminder of the law (or laws) that affect the case, on what basis the decision was made, and the final judgment about the constitutionality of the question at hand. In the Miranda case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the Opinion.

It didn't happen in Miranda, but sometimes other justices can write separate opinions, called concurring opinions. They might do that if they agree with the majority opinion, but have separate reasons for doing so other than the ones listed in the main opinion.

Dissent

In Miranda v. Arizona, four Supreme Court justices dissented. That means four members of the court voted against the ruling. To dissent just means to disagree or go against the majority's decision.

It's important to note how many justices dissent in a Supreme Court case—and why they dissent. In Miranda v. Arizona, the 5-4 vote tells us that the issue wasn't necessarily clear and obvious. In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, only one judge dissented, demonstrating that…America was pretty racist at that time. Seven justices voted for the whole "separate but equal" idea, and only one said it was wrong. He's on our "right side of history" list. And guess what? It was John Marshall Harlan, the grandfather of Miranda dissenter Justice John Marshall Harlan II.

You can't make this stuff up.

Chief Justice

We call the judges of the Supreme Court "justices" because it sounds fancy. Bastions of justice, they are.

Okay, fine, their title comes from the Constitution.

The Chief Justice is—you guessed it, the top judge. The big cheese. The head honcho. If the chief is in the majority, he or she usually gets the job of writing the official statement at the conclusion of a trial.

In Miranda v. Arizona, the Chief Justice is Earl Warren, a famous liberal justice whose Court overturned school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and ruled in favor of civil liberties in many other cases. President Eisenhower said that appointing Warren as Chief Justice was the worst decision he ever made (source).

Fifth Amendment

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution gives us a few rights when it comes to getting in trouble with the law. The important part we need to know here is this: "[…] nor shall he be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself […]." It's the right to not incriminate ourselves, even if we did commit the crime.

Sixth Amendment

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution lays out all of the rules for how people are to be treated in a fair trial. In any criminal trial, the defendant gets a public, speedy trial; an impartial (unbiased) jury; knowledge of who the accusers are; what they are being accused of; and, most importantly for the Miranda v. Arizona case, a lawyer. Miranda extended the right to a lawyer by giving indigent suspects one for free while they were in custody—not just when mounting a legal defense.