William Hubbs Rehnquist

“ Over time, our cases recognized two constitutional bases for the requirement that a confession be voluntary to be admitted into evidence: the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 542 (1897) (stating that the voluntariness test "is controlled by that portion of the Fifth Amendment . . . commanding that no person 'shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself '") ”

“ The challenge in that case was to an order imposing Rule 11 sanctions for filing a frivolous complaint, entered [p. 138] after the plaintiff had voluntarily dismissed his action. In the course of our discussion we noted that " [i] t is well established that a federal court may consider collateral issues after an action is no longer pending.... [An] imposition of a Rule 11 sanction is not a judgment on the merits of an action. Rather, it requires the determination of a collateral issue: whether the attorney has abused the judicial process, and, if so, what sanction would be appropriate." ”

“ In most cases, comity and respect for federalism compel us to defer to the decisions of state courts on issues of state law. That practice reflects our understanding that the decisions of state courts are definitive pronouncements of the will of the States as sovereigns. ”

“ To conclude that such actions constituted extortion would effectively discard the statutory requirement that property must be obtained from another, replacing it instead with the notion that merely interfering with or depriving someone of property is sufficient to constitute extortion. ”

“ In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) , we held that certain warnings must be given before a suspect's statement made during custodial interrogation could be admitted in evidence. In the wake of that decision, Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. §3501, which in essence laid down a rule that the admissibility of such statements should turn only on whether or not they were voluntarily made. We hold that Miranda, being a constitutional decision of this Court, may not be in effect overruled by an Act of Congress, and we decline to overrule Miranda ourselves. ”

“ Fairness dictates that a provision be made for either party to object to how a particular ballot is counted. Additionally, this short time period must allow for judicial review. I respectfully submit this cannot be completed without taking Florida's presidential electors outside the safe harbor provision, creating the very real possibility of disenfranchising those nearly six million voters who are able to correctly cast their ballots on election day. ”

“ A person who with a view to compel another person to do or to abstain from doing an act which such other person has a legal right to do or to abstain from doing, wrongfully and unlawfully, ↑ . A subcommittee of the Commerce Committee, known as the Copeland Subcommittee, employed a working definition of "racketeering," which included organized conspiracies to "commit the crimes of extortion or coercion, or attempts to commit extortion or coercion, within the definition of these crimes found in the penal law of the State of New York and other jurisdictions." ”

“ The disadvantage of the Miranda rule is that statements which may be by no means involuntary, made by a defendant who is aware of his "rights," may nonetheless be excluded and a guilty defendant go free as a result. But experience suggests that the totality-of-the-circumstances test which §3501 seeks to revive is more difficult than Miranda for law enforcement officers to conform to, and for courts to apply in a consistent manner. ”

“ The Solicitor General agreed at oral argument that even if we accept the Government's view as to extortion under the Hobbs Act, the cases must be remanded because the generalized jury instruction regarding federal extortion included a woman's right to seek medical services as a property right petitioners could extort from respondents; a right he acknowledged is more accurately characterized as an individual liberty interest. ”

“ Courts do make mistakes; in cases such as Catholic Conference it may be possible immediately to seek relief in an appellate tribunal. But where such an immediate appeal is not authorized, there is no constitutional infirmity under Article III in requiring those practicing before the courts to conduct themselves in compliance with the applicable procedural rules in the interim, and to allow the courts to impose Rule 11 sanctions in the event of their failure to do so. ”

“ Because custodial police interrogation, by its very nature, isolates and pressures the individual, we stated that " [e] ven without employing brutality, the 'third degree' or [other] specific stratagems, . . . custodial interrogation exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty and trades on the weakness of individuals." Id., at 455. We concluded that the coercion inherent in custodial interrogation blurs the line between voluntary and involuntary statements, and thus heightens the risk that an individual will not be "accorded his privilege under the Fifth Amendment . ”

“ Underlying the extension of the certification deadline and the short-changing of the contest period was, presumably, the clear implication that certification was a matter of significance: The certified winner would enjoy presumptive validity, making a contest proceeding by the losing candidate an uphill battle. In its latest opinion, however, the court empties certification of virtually all legal consequence during the contest, and in doing so departs from the provisions enacted by the Florida Legislature. ”

“ From almost the founding days of this country, it has been firmly established that Congress, acting pursuant to its authority to make all laws "necessary and proper" [3] to their establishment, also may enact laws regulating the conduct of those courts and the means by which their judgments are enforced. ”

“ Additional support for our conclusion that Miranda is constitutionally based is found in the Miranda Court's invitation for legislative action to protect the constitutional right against coerced self-incrimination. After discussing the "compelling pressures" inherent in custodial police interrogation, the Miranda Court concluded that, " [i] n order to combat these pressures and to permit a full opportunity to exercise the privilege against self-incrimination, the accused must be adequately and effectively appraised of his rights and the exercise of those rights must be fully honored. ”

“ But no one claims that these ballots have not previously been tabulated; they were initially read by voting machines at the time of the election, and thereafter reread by virtue of Florida's automatic recount provision. No one claims there was any fraud in the election. The Supreme Court of Florida ordered this additional recount under the provision of the Election Code giving the circuit judge the authority to provide relief that is "appropriate under such circumstances." ”

“ They concede, however, that for a state offense to be an "act or threat involving...extortion,...which is chargeable under State law," as RICO requires, see 18 U.S.C. §1961 (1) , the conduct must be capable of being generically classified as extortionate. Brief for Respondents 33–34. They further agree that such "generic" extortion is defined as "'obtaining something of value from another with his consent induced by the wrongful use of force, fear, or threats.'" Id., at 34 (quoting Nardello, 393 U.S., at 290) . ”

“ We further concluded that if the District Court was found to be lacking subject-matter jurisdiction, that the contempt order would also fall. Focusing on this second part of our decision, petitioner cites Catholic Conference as establishing the proposition that a sanction must fall if imposed when jurisdiction is in fact absent. [4]
Catholic Conference does not stand for such a broad assertion. A civil contempt order has much different purposes than a Rule 11 sanction. Civil contempt is designed to force the contemnor to comply with an order of the court, id., at 79 ”

“ This is one of them. Article II, § 1, cl. 2, provides that " [e] ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct," electors for President and Vice President. (Emphasis added.) Thus, the text of the election law itself, and not just its interpretation by the courts of the States, takes on independent significance.
In McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892) , we explained that Art. II, § 1, cl. 2, "convey [s] the broadest power of determination" and "leaves it to the legislature exclusively to define the method" of appointment. ”

“ Our decisions in United States v. Green, 350 U.S. 415, 420 (1956) (explaining that "extortion...in no way depends upon having a direct benefit conferred on the person who obtains the property") , and Carpenter v. United States, 484 U.S. 19, 27 (1987) (finding that confidential business information constitutes "property" for purposes of the federal mail fraud statute) , do not require such a result. Whatever the outer boundaries may be, the effort to characterize petitioners' actions here as an "obtaining of property from" respondents is well beyond them. ”

“ The President is vested with the executive power of the nation. The importance of his election and the vital character of its relationship to and effect upon the welfare and safety of the whole people cannot be too strongly stated. ”

“ The determination "depend [s] upon a weighing of the circumstances of pressure against the power of resistance of the person confessing." Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 185 (1953) . We have never abandoned this due process jurisprudence, and thus continue to exclude confessions that were obtained involuntarily. ”

“ They claimed that petitioners, all of whom were associated with PLAN, the alleged racketeering enterprise, were members of a nationwide conspiracy to "shut down" abortion clinics through a pattern of racketeering activity that included acts of extortion in violation of the Hobbs Act. [3]
The District Court dismissed respondents' RICO claims for failure to allege that the predicate acts of racketeering or the racketeering enterprise were economically motivated. See National Organization for Women, Inc. ”

“ Moreover, the court's interpretation of "legal vote," and hence its decision to order a contest-period recount, plainly departed from the legislative scheme. Florida statutory law cannot reasonably be thought to require the counting of improperly marked ballots. Each Florida precinct before election day provides instructions on how properly to cast a vote, Fla. Stat. Ann. § 101.46 (1992) ; each polling place on election day contains a working model of the voting machine it uses, Fla. ”