Plead the Fifth

From the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1791), whose self-incrimination clause grew out of English law's gradual abandonment of torture and forced confessions in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The colloquial formulas 'take the Fifth' and 'plead the Fifth' became household phrases through mid-century controversy: witnesses before the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator McCarthy's subcommittees invoked the privilege when pressed to name names, and McCarthy branded refusers 'fifth amendment communists', while those who complied, such as the director Elia Kazan, ended careers, and those who refused, such as the actor Zero Mostel, were blacklisted. Miranda v. Arizona (1966), requiring the now-familiar warning before police interrogation, cemented the right to remain silent in popular awareness. The courts still police the edges: the privilege must be invoked explicitly rather than implied, corporations cannot claim it, and civil trials may draw adverse inferences from silence.