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I was just watching "Cops" and I heard an officer read the Miranda warning. He got to the part that goes "...anything you say may and will be used against you in a court of law..." and I thought "Well, which is it? It may be used, or it will be used?" The unnecessary word here seems to be 'will'. I tried to find a quick answer as to how this wording came to be, gave up, and came to this forum. It seems that the most commonly chosen way to give the Miranda warning is to stick closely to what the original supreme court's decision's wording was. But in the wording of the decision they said "The suspect should be warned anything he says may be used against him..." they did not say "may and will" or "can and will". Does anyone know how this mysterious 'will' got in there? I can't think of anyone else ever speaking this way. No one ever says "I may and will go to the store today." Of course they don't really mean that anything they say will be used against them either, because there's plenty of insignificant things a suspect might say that wouldn't be evidence and could never be used against them. I'm thinking maybe someone decided that saying "may be used against you" might confuse a suspect into thinking it's possible to speak off the record. So someone changed it to "may(or can) AND WILL be used against you" as sort of an extra emphasis. Does anyone else have the knowledge or research to make sense of how this wording came to be and how it became so popular? Can anyone think of any other examples where this "can and will" or "may and will" structure is used? Maybe there's an example that predates the Miranda rights. I may and will be very grateful for your feedback. 🙂
I have no insight into Miranda, but I have heard can and will several times, a few even before Miranda. It seems it is always in the context of some perceived inability or prohibition.
You can't smoke here.
I can and will smoke here.
He can't throw me off the team.
He can and will throw you off the team unless your grades improve.
To me, the can asserts the authority or power, whereas the will asserts the likelihood that the authority would be exercised should the situation arise.
If you search on "can and will" in Google Books, you'll find examples going back into the 1700's. This web site claims that, in 1968, "Thomas Lynch, the California Attorney General … asked Harold Berliner, then district attorney of Nevada County, CA, and Doris Maier, then deputy attorney general to write something." (Unfortunately the link to the Sacramento Bee article cited in no longer working.)
Berliner then apparently starting marketing wallet cards with the warning printed on them.
I guess it's the 'may and will' wording that I find even odder, which apparently is a version that some police departments use, but I suppose that's a corruption of the 'can and will' structure. What makes it still odd in the 'can and will' structure is, as I said in the original post, not everything will be used against them. It could; It CAN be used; But not everything will. It's not quite the same as the "he can and will throw you off the team" example, because 'will throw you off the team' is immediately qualified by "unless your grades improve", in that sentence. The miranda warning sounds so odd to me because it's not qualified by anything. I bet a lot of the google books results are sentences ending with qualifiers. Without the qualifier at the end of the sentence it makes the can and will redundant to eachother. In the Miranda warning, the way it's given, it's closer to the example I gave, "I can and will go to the store today." It begs the question: If everything the suspect says will be used against him, and there's no mentioned circumstance where it won't, then why also mention that it can be used against him. That it will implies that it can, anyways.
Actually, people in my life often do things they have no right or authority to do. Mercifully, some people also refrain from taking all action within their power. If you do not experience the former, you are truly blessed. If you don't experience the latter, you are likely quite miserable.
Because of my experience, I see a clear distinction between right and intent. It is the assertion of both the right and intent in view in the phrase can and will.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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