Privilege Against Self-Incrimination

R. H. Helmholz, Charles M. Gray, John H. Langbein, Eben Moglen

Some version of the privilege against self-incrimination - which prohibits compelling men and women to answer questions that will aid in convicting them of a crime - has existed in the Western legal tradition since at least the twelfth century. However, the privilege has taken different forms over the centuries, and its effective implementation as a basic civil liberty is much more recent. Challenging the accounts of John Henry Wigmore and Leonard W. Levy, this history of the privilege shows that it played a limited role in protecting criminal defendants before the nineteenth century. Each chapter of this study focuses on a distinct period, uncovering what the privilege meant in practice. Countering the view that the privilege was established in the common law during the course of seventeenth-century constitutional conflicts, the authors demonstrate that, although it was often...

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