The U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson et al. v. New Jersey in 1965 dealt with the retroactivity of two previous court decisions: Escobedo v. Illinois and Miranda v. Arizona, which established certain rights for individuals under police interrogation, including the right to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning. The question before the court was whether these rulings should apply to cases that were already underway when they were decided - a concept known as "retroactivity". In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that neither Escobedo nor Miranda would be applied retroactively; instead, their principles would only apply to trials begun after those decisions had been handed down or where convictions had not yet become final at the time of those rulings.

In the dissenting opinion for Johnson et al. v. New Jersey, 1965, Justice Black argued that the Court's decision not to apply its rulings in Escobedo and Miranda retroactively was inconsistent with previous decisions where new rules were applied to cases still pending on direct review. He believed that this inconsistency could undermine public confidence in law enforcement and judicial fairness. Furthermore, he contended that excluding confessions obtained without warnings of constitutional rights from evidence would deter police misconduct more effectively than allowing such confessions into evidence under certain circumstances as decided by the majority opinion. In his view, applying these rulings retroactively would better serve justice by ensuring equal treatment under law regardless of when a case was tried.