Self-Incrimination and the Constitution: A Brief Rejoinder to Professor Kamisar

Abstract

Professor Yale Kamisar has been writing in the field of criminal procedure for many years, and we are grateful that he has chosen to respond to our ideas. At the outset of his long and lively response to Fifth Amendment First Principles, Professor Kamisar promises to analyze our constitutional argument, with "special attention" to "current doctrines or trends." But in what follows, he offers almost no analysis of, well, the Constitution - its text, its history, its structure. We believe that constitutional law should, ideally, bear some relation to, well, the Constitution. Professor Kamisar, it seems, does not. He also sidesteps most of our main points.