The Privilege against Self-Incrimination: Its Origins and Development

by R.H. Helmholz, John H. Langbein, Charles M. Gray

Challenging the accounts of John Henry Wigmore and Leonard W. Levy, this history of the privilege against self-incrimination demonstrates that what has sometimes been taken to be an unchanging tenet of our legal system has actually encompassed many different legal consequences in a history that reaches back to the Middle Ages.

Each chapter of this definitive study uncovers what the privilege meant in practice. The authors trace the privilege from its origins in the medieval period to its first appearance in English common law, and from its translation to the American colonies to its development into an effective protection for criminal defendants in the nineteenth century. The authors show that the modern privilege—the right to remain silent—is far from being a basic civil liberty. Rather, it has evolved through halting and controversial steps. The book also questions how well an expansive notion of the privilege accords with commonly accepted principles of morality.

This book constitutes a major revision of our understanding of an important aspect of both criminal and constitutional law.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published June 8, 1997

About the author

R.H. 'Dick' Helmholz, Ph.D. (Medieval History, University of California at Berkeley, 1970; LL.B., Harvard Law School, 1965; A.B., French Literature, Princeton University, 1962) is the Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at The University of Chicago Law School.

In the course of his career, he has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize. In the academic year 2000–1, he served as Arthur Goodhart Professor of Law in Cambridge University, where he was also elected to a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, a Member of the American Law Institute, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

His teaching interests have been centered in the law of property and in various aspects of natural resources law. His research interests have been concentrated in legal history. In the latter, his principal contribution has been to show the relevance of the Roman and canon laws to the development of the common law.