Has anyone else read the oral argument transcript in Fellers v. United States? If not, it is available here:

Does anyone else find it funny that the supreme court justices are worried stiff that creating a bright line rule requiring a waiver of the 6th Amendment right to counsel before interrogating an indicted criminal defendant is overly "technical" or "formal"? Our whole legal system is based on technicalities. Many crimes are crimes not because they are wrong in themselves, but because they violate a legislatively-crafted technically, re: a law.

The funniest example I heard of such technicalities applying to ordinary people is in the context of war protesting. If you are protesting near a federal building, you may be guilty of a local crime, if you are blocking the flow of traffic, etc. But if you step on the grass, you may be guilty of a federal crime, since you are on federal soil. Imagine the poor guy who jumps from the road to dodge a car and falls onto federal soil. Two for the price of one. Odd.

And yet I have never seen a case dismissed on the ground that the law violated was a mere formality, or overly technical. Imagine the supreme court saying, "We hold that the defendant was wrongfully convicted because the law is too technical; does not make sense; and is difficult to comply with."

But when it comes to the police, well, we do not want to hinder them with such formalism. Where the formalism comes, of course, from the Constitution. Today the Bill of Rights are obstacles to be overcome rather than rights to be enforced.

Alas, poor Jefferson. I knew him, Rehnquist.