The Confrontation Clause gives the accused persons the right to be confronted with the witnesses against them. A functional view of the clause is that it prevents prosecutorial misconduct and increases the reliability of guilty verdicts by requiring that certain evidence be subject to challenge in court before it can serve as the basis for a conviction. The formalistic view is that the clause merely creates specific rules for criminal trials and that these rules are unrelated to any policy. The Supreme Court has taken the formalistic view when the issue has been whether a defendant's confrontation of a witness at trial was constitutionally adequate. In contrast, it has taken the functional view when the issue has been whether confrontation at trial was constitutionally necessary. The Court has not acknowledged this bifurcated approach, and its formalistic decisions in particular create a bizarre pattern when compared to each other or the functional decisions. Footnotes