Majority decision
The Supreme Court used the case to decide whether the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was valid during trials in state courts, not just in federal courts. Before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights, including the Fifth Amendment, did not apply to state courts. The Court did not reach the question of whether the defendants' Fifth Amendment rights were actually violated in the original trial.
The majority opinion was delivered by Justice William Henry Moody. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter. Moody considered both the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: "The general question, therefore, is whether such a law violates the Fourteenth Amendment either by abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States or by depriving persons of their life, liberty or property without due process of law."
Privileges or immunities
The court cited the decision in the Slaughter-House Cases that the language in the Fourteenth Amendment ("No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States...") did not curtail state power. The Supreme Court decided 8-1 that the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination applied only to federal court cases.
Selective incorporation
The case provides an early explanation of the doctrine of selective incorporation: only a portion of the Bill of Rights is applied to the states by incorporation, under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause:
"It is possible that some of the personal rights safeguarded by the first eight Amendments against National action may also be safeguarded against state action, because a denial of them would be a denial of due process of law. If this is so, it is not because those rights are enumerated in the first eight Amendments, but because they are of such a nature that they are included in the conception of due process of law."
— Twining v. New Jersey: 211 U.S. 78, 99 (1908)
The court concluded that exemption from self-incrimination was not necessary for a conception of due process.
In the United States, the Miranda warning is a type of notification customarily given by police to criminal suspects in police custody advising them of their right to silence and, in effect, protection from self-incrimination; that is, their right to refuse to answer questions or provide information to law enforcement or other officials. These rights are often referred to as Miranda rights. The purpose of such notification is to preserve the admissibility of their statements made during custodial interrogation in later criminal proceedings.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials.
Substantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if procedural protections are present or the rights are unenumerated elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Courts have asserted that such protections come from the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Substantive due process demarks the line between those acts that courts hold to be subject to government regulation or legislation and those that courts place beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve that function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas has called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process.
Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that added behavior that "shocks the conscience" into tests of what violates due process clause of the 14th Amendment. This balancing test is often criticized as having subsequently been used in a particularly subjective manner.
In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except as authorized by law.
Incorporation, in United States law, is the doctrine by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been made applicable to the states. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, the courts held that its protections extended only to the actions of the federal government and that the Bill of Rights did not place limitations on the authority of the state and local governments. However, the post-Civil War era, beginning in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment, which declared the abolition of slavery, gave rise to the incorporation of other amendments, applying more rights to the states and people over time. Gradually, various portions of the Bill of Rights have been held to be applicable to the state and local governments by incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.
Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held 6—3 that, while the Fourth Amendment was applicable to the states, the exclusionary rule was not a necessary ingredient of the Fourth Amendment's right against warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures. In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), the Court held that as a matter of judicial implication the exclusionary rule was enforceable in federal courts but not derived from the explicit requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The Wolf Court decided not to incorporate the exclusionary rule as part of the Fourteenth Amendment in large part because the states which had rejected the Weeks Doctrine had not left the right to privacy without other means of protection. However, because most of the states' rules proved to be ineffective in deterrence, the Court overruled Wolf in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). This landmark case made history as the exclusionary rule enforceable against the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the same extent that it applied against the federal government.
Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46 (1947), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the incorporation of the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Its decision is part of a long line of cases that eventually led to the Selective Incorporation Doctrine.
Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the incorporation of the Fifth Amendment protection against double jeopardy.
Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497 (1961), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge a Connecticut law that banned the use of contraceptives and banned doctors from advising their use because the law had never been enforced. Therefore, any challenge to the law was deemed unripe because there was no actual threat of injury to anyone who disobeyed the law. The same statute would later be challenged again (successfully) in Griswold v. Connecticut.
The Privileges or Immunities Clause is Amendment XIV, Section 1, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution. Along with the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment, this clause became part of the Constitution on July 9, 1868.
Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940), is a landmark court decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment's federal protection of religious free exercise incorporates via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and so applies to state governments too.
Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that law enforcement officers and other public employees have the right to be free from compulsory self-incrimination. It gave birth to the Garrity warning, which is administered by investigators to suspects in internal and administrative investigations in a similar manner as the Miranda warning is administered to suspects in criminal investigations.
The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution addresses criminal procedure and other aspects of the Constitution. It was ratified, along with nine other articles, in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment applies to every level of the government, including the federal, state, and local levels, in regard to a US citizen or resident of the US. The Supreme Court furthered the protections of this amendment through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled, by a 6–2 vote, that it is a violation of a defendant's Fifth Amendment rights for the prosecutor to comment to the jury on the defendant's declining to testify, or for the judge to instruct the jury that such silence is evidence of guilt.
Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14 (1967), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided that the Compulsory Process Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution is applicable in state courts as well as federal courts. Jackie Washington had attempted to call his co-defendant as a witness, but was blocked by Texas courts because state law prevented co-defendants from testifying for each other, under the theory that they would be likely to lie for each other on the stand.
Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581 (1900), is a United States Supreme Court decision which addressed two questions relating to the Due Process Clause. First, whether Utah's practice of allowing prosecutors to directly file criminal charges without a grand jury were consistent with due process, and second, whether Utah's use of eight jurors instead of twelve in "courts of general jurisdiction" were constitutional.
Chavez v. Martinez, 538 U.S. 760 (2003), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court, which held that a police officer does not deprive a suspect of constitutional rights by failing to issue a Miranda warning. However, the court held open the possibility that the right to substantive due process could be violated in certain egregious circumstances and remanded the case to the lower court to decide this issue on the case's facts.
Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432 (1957), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that involuntary blood samples, taken by a skilled technician to determine intoxication, do not violate substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This case was only the second time the Court considered whether police could forcibly enter inside a suspect's body to extract evidence. Writing for a 6–3 majority, Justice Tom C. Clark argued that blood tests were necessary as a matter of public policy to ensure traffic safety on roads and highways, and that "modern community living requires modern scientific methods of crime detection." Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William O. Douglas both wrote dissenting opinions in which they argued that the involuntary blood sample taken in this case was "repulsive" and violated substantive due process.
