Police Interrogation, Language, and the Law

Recent calls for justice reform have put a spotlight on how the police enforce the law in the United States. How a person’s constitutional rights may be legally thwarted during police interrogation, however, has not been part of any meaningful discussion on police reform. This novel book examines the intersections of the law and policing discourse through the detailed analysis of a large corpus of United States federal court rulings, starting with Miranda v. Arizona (1966). It covers a wide range of topics, including the history of police interrogation in the United States, the role of federal law in handicapping a person’s ability to invoke their right to counsel, and the invocation game of police interrogation that may lead a variety of suspects to change their discursive preferences. It highlights the need for American police interrogation reform, exploring the paths taken by other jurisdictions outside of the United States. This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available open access. Check our website, Cambridge Core, for details.

Marianne Mason is Associate Professor at James Madison University. Her notable publications include The Discourse of Police Interviews (coedited, 2020) and Courtroom Interpreting (2008). In 2018, she received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship.