Adamson v. California

The Adamson court divided 5-4. Both Justices Murphy and Black wrote dissenting opinions. Black, who was emerging as the leader of the "due process revolution" that would eventually see most of the Bill of Rights incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, argued powerfully for a "total incorporation" approach to due process:

The first 10 amendments were proposed and adopted largely because of fear that Government might unduly interfere with prized individual liberties. The people wanted and demanded a Bill of Rights written into their Constitution. The amendments embodying the Bill of Rights were intended to curb all branches of the Federal Government in the fields touched by the amendments-- Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. The Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments are pointedly aimed at confining exercise of power by courts and judges within precise boundaries, particularly in the procedure used for the trial of criminal cases . . . My study of the historical events that culminated in the Fourteenth Amendment . . . persuades me that one of the chief objects that the provisions of the Amendment's first section, separately, and as a whole, were intended to accomplish was to make the Bill of Rights, applicable to the states.

Justice Black would always remain a constitutional fundamentalist, but towards the end of his tenure on the Supreme Court, convinced that the Courts headed by Justices Earl Warren and Warren Burger had gone too far in their judicial activism, he grew more conservative. Black's early commitment to the due process revolution, however, led to significant changes in the administration of criminal justice, such as the administration of the Miranda warning to individuals arrested to inform them of their right to remain silent and their right to be represented by an attorney, and the exclusionary rule, which prevents improperly obtained evidence from being introduced at a trial.