The Historical Origins of the Privilege against Self-Incrimination at Common Law

Abstract

guaranty that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself1 - was a landmark event in the history of Anglo-American criminal procedure. Prior historical scholarship has located the origins of the common law privilege in the second half of the seventeenth century, as part of the aftermath of the constitutional struggles that resulted in the abolition of the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. This essay explains that the true origins of the common law privilege are to be found not in the high politics of the English revolutions, but in the rise of adversary criminal procedure at the end of the eighteenth century. The privilege against self-incrimination at common law was the work of defense counsel. From the middle of the sixteenth century, when sources first allow us to glimpse the conduct of early modern criminal trials,2 until late in the eighteenth century, the fundamental safeguard for the defendant in common law criminal procedure was not the right to remain silent, but rather the opportunity to speak. The essential purpose of the criminal trial was to afford the accused an opportunity to reply in person to the charges against him. Among the attributes of the procedure that imported this character to the criminal trial, the most fundamental was the rule that forbade defense counsel. The prohibition upon defense counsel was relaxed in stages from 1696 until 1836, initially