David Cole

In order to navigate the debate, The New York Times offers "an annotated guide to the clauses most revered, and disputed, by advocates on either side of the political spectrum," and Georgetown Law Center's David Cole provides a decidedly more cutting look at the situation by revealing "for the first time" the "Conservative Constitution of the United States of Real America," for The Washington Post.

The Times annotated guide touching on those "revered" and "disputed" portions of the Constitution includes sections on the Commerce Clause, the Reconstruction Amendments, the Necessary and Proper Clause and Executive Power. According to The Times, the Commerce Clause is "the biggest source of complaint for many Tea Party activists, which explains the emphasis on it during the nomination hearings for Elena Kagan, the court's newest Justices. The strictest of Tea Party interpretations argues that this clause was intended to govern only interstate transportation."

Cole, a leading constitutional scholar and professor of law at Georgetown University, notes today's reading of a version of the Constitution on the House floor as a "first step toward fulfilling the tea party's goal of ‘restoring' our nation's founding document," in a column for The Post, in which he also reveals, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, a conservative constitution for "Real America."

Cole's preamble is especially entertaining:

We, the Real Americans, in order to form a more God-Fearing Union, establish Justice as we see it, Defeat Health-Care Reform, and Preserve and Protect our Property, our Guns and our Right Not to Pay Taxes, do ordain and establish this Conservative Constitution for the United States of Real America.

Instead the slim majority, led by Justice Anthony Kennedy said that criminal suspects must speak up and tell interrogators that they want to remain silent before their Miranda rights are invoked. Writing for The Root, University of Maryland law school professor Sherrilyn Ifill maintained that "police officers may now interrogate detainees for hours on end - no limit is suggested by the court - and so long as the detainee does not use the magic words that expressly indicates a refusal to answer questions or the desire for an attorney, any words uttered - no matter how few - may be used against him."

During a recent ACS panel discussion, constitutional law experts discussed Miranda's future in light of the recent court rulings, such as Berghuis, and the administration's announcement that it would seek a broad exception to the Miranda rule, established in the 1966 landmark ruling in Miranda v. Arizona.

Constitutional law expert and Georgetown University Law Center Professor David Cole noted that a "public safety exception" has already been created by the Supreme Court and that further carving out exceptions to the Miranda rule for waging war against terrorism, a nebulous term, would only further weaken constitutional rights for citizens and noncitizens. And broadening an exception to the Miranda rule, Cole added, would likely be unconstitutional.

It is not clear why Congress should be speaking to this matter, Cole (pictured) said. Miranda, he continued, is a judge-made rule driven by constitutional concerns. And the last time Congress "waded into" the realm by trying to re-write Miranda, the high court invalidated the action.

The panel also included Michael German, policy counsel for the ACLU and a former FBI special agent, and Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow and research director at Brookings. Video of the panel discussion, "Miranda's Future," is below.