I'm not a lawyer nor an American, but from I can tell, it's mostly the result of a simple rule applied to many edge cases over centuries of jurisprudence, which is much more important in the US than in civil law countries.
For example, the whole Miranda rights thing came from a Supreme Court decision from 1966, not a law passed by Congress.
Yeah. To follow up (and try to explain it in a way dumb people like me will understand) the US is big on "precedence", which essentially means if a court says, "We believe this law applies this way in this specific scenario" then another court can and likely will reference that previous decision while making its own ruling on a completely separate (but somehow related) case.
As a hypothetical example, imagine a court 50 years ago said that talking to the police after invoking your 5th Amendment rights nullified your invocation of your rights.
Then, a case appears where a suspect wasn't read his Miranda rights but had invoked the 5th, except he then spoke to the police immediately after (and nullified his previous invocation). Well, what if the court decides he can re-invoke his 5th Amendment rights once he's finally read his Miranda rights? Boom. More precedence.
See how it can get complicated? It's almost kind of like when you have to write a bunch of edge-case code because weird "gotchas" keep cropping up and it's a bitch to rewrite the entire thing.
Best i can tell it is not just that it will be referenced, but that judges on the same tier of court is bound by that decision until a higher tier overrules it.
This process btw is how USA effectively got software patents.
A corporation or other applied for a patent on a production process that used a computer (and therefore software) to gain more precise control of the results than previous mechanical means.
The patent holder was sued over it, and a judge ruled in the patent holders favor.
This ruling was then used by other lawyers to press for "process" patents, where the process was described in software.
And so far no higher court has overruled the initial ruling, thus effectively USA have software patents.
Judges on a tier below a decision are bound by the higher court's ruling. This is mandatory precedent.
Judges on the same tier are not strictly bound, but in the interest of consistency (the law always seeks to be applied in the same way to the same situation), will look to the rulings of other courts on their level if no higher court has ruled. This is called persuasive precedent. The Supremes often take a case because the lower courts, (Circuit Courts of Appeals) have ruled differently on the same issue. This is called a circuit split.
Would be helpful if you cited the case, since patent law is an interesting example of a lower tier court going around the supreme court. It was pretty clear (except maybe to a lawyer) with Gottschalk v. Benson that software should not be patented, but that never stopped the federal circuit from working around that little problem... (http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2012/03/20/supreme-court-mayo-v-pr...)
Why would civil law systems be simpler? Wouldn't the civil code have to essentially hard-code just as many edge cases? Or are those systems OK with unpredictable outcomes for such cases?
I'm not sure they are always simpler, but it's easier to get a simpler flow when you can reformulate it, instead of having to rely on the accretion of decisions on specific issues.
It's complicated because it's based on 200 years of case law. That's how American (common) law works: the law itself states a broad principle and is refined through the courts.
It's worth remembering that Americans have generally a pretty solid right to avoid self-incrimination. In the UK, for instance, your silence can be used against you in court.
And a lot of case law arises from the desire to create specific prospective incentives for the parties in different situations. But a lot also arises out of judges trying to distinguish past precedent to get an end-result they want.
I think this happens a lot more with the 4th and 5th amendments because they're so politically dicey. Like, okay, the cops shouldn't have searched that parked car without a warrant, but now you're the judge who has to exclude the gloves spattered with the victim's blood they found in the trunk.
That's not the view of the European Court of Human Rights which apparently said "the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination are generally recognized international standards which lie at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence
It's complicated for government or law enforcement, not for the person being questioned. That's by design- the tests and hoops to jump through are the protection at work. For the questioned it's relatively simple. When questioned, decline to answer and invoke the fifth. If mirandized/in custody, request a lawyer. And then don't say anything else.
> It's complicated for government or law enforcement, not for the person being questioned.
I think it's more complex for government, but still complex for the person being questioned. For instance, the chart notes that if you are granted immunity, you cannot leave a form blank or assert your right to remain silent in a blanket fashion.
A second way things are complicated in the Hiibel case, which requires you to speak to the police to say your name.
A third way is that suspects who assert their rights are sometimes treated worse by the police. The US has a storied history of police abuse, including torture (Jon Burge, for one). Occasionally, this is caught on video, and it sometimes seems that the reaction by the police is one of anger. Infuriating the police by asserting your rights may get you some non-judicial punishment, including "contempt-of-cop", in which the police assault you and then charge you with assault via, for instance, bleeding on their uniforms (Henry Davis). In unlucky cases, you may end up dead from "excited delirium", a disease almost exclusively suffered by those in police custody but out of range of video cameras.
> It's complicated for government or law enforcement, not for the person being questioned.
I'm not sure about that. The government does this all the time - cops will know exactly where the lines are and how to get you to fuck up. They get daily practice in it.
Meanwhile, your average citizen likely doesn't know what the Fifth Amendment means beyond vague stuff they remember from high school, and there's a good chance they really don't know you have to explicitly state you're exercising it.
In context to what you're responding to I must assume, anyway, I'm pretty sure that between the time of requesting your lawyer and that lawyer appearing to advise you then you keep your mouth shut. Refuse to answer any questions until your lawyer is there to advise you. Once the lawyer is present and questioning resumes, you may be advised to invoke the fifth.
Nope, once you have requested a lawyer to be present they cannot question you until you get one (or they get one for you). Of course they never actually go get a lawyer because it's expensive and any lawyer will just instruct you not to answer any questions anyways.
Is this on purpose? And why? What (ow who) makes such laws so complicated, that you seem to have to study law to maneuver through these minefields.