March 15, 2026
[A preliminary note: The Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads, in part: No person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself…”]. The quotation is…
The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. It is one of the great landmarks in man’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.
William O. Douglas (1898-1980), American supreme court justice, An Almanac of Liberty, (1954), Jay p. 123
MEDITATION: Assuming you are an American and setting aside the possibility that you might have to invoke the Fifth Amendment (and not testify against yourself) at some future date, do you share the all-too-common view that anyone who “pleads the Fifth” (that is, who refuses to answer a question on the grounds that a response may incriminate themselves), do you think she must be guilty of something?
Then again, why should you have to make a case against yourself just because no one else can?
COMMENTARY: Douglas knew that liberty lives in the details.Constitutional prescriptions, established protocols, and legal precedents may appear dull enough to overlook. But democracies collapse quietly when those who are supposed to enforce the law grow impatient with the processes by which the law is enforced.It is in the small print of freedom that we are protected, precisely because it slows things down, not permitting a rush to judgement. It’s called “due process”. Perhaps, if you don’t understand due process, come at it in this way: it’s exact opposite of a mugging.
