Privilege Against Self-Incrimination

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 stated as a principle, the privilege could not assume its current form until the development of modern criminal procedure. The authors also analyze the colonial American conception of the privilege, tracing its subsequent development through the nineteenth century and the post-Miranda era as the basis for our