Introduction: Wherefor the Privilege?

Abstract

This Symposium Issue features eleven papers concerned with the fate of the Fifth Amendment, and one concerned with the fate of the Sixth. All but one of the papers was presented at an extraordinarily lively and enlightening series of panels organized by Professor Alex Stein and held over two days at the Cardozo School of Law on March 2 and 3, 2008. The presentations, as well as the panel and audience discussions that followed, wrestled with a broad range of issues. We searched for theoretical rationales for a Privilege against compelled self-incrimination and for coherence in present U.S. Fifth Amendment doctrine. We examined comparative practices in other nations and courts for insight into our own. We asked how contemporary changes in the methods of criminal investigation might alter the significance of the Privilege. We disagreed about the meaning of the Privilege in an age of increasing pleas of guilty and fewer trials. And we heard a variety of perspectives on the relationship between the Privilege, on the one hand, and the reliability of verdicts and convictions, on the other.