Law School's Dean Defends Amendment

Use of the Fifth Amendment before a Congressional Investigating Committee does not necessarily imply guilt, Erwin N. Griswold, Dean of the Law School, said last night at the year's first Law School Forum.

In a debate with New York attorney C. Dickerman Williams on the uses of the controversial constitutional guarantee, Griswold said that no blanket inference can be drawn from the use of the amendment.

"In academic cases, for instance, people often invoke the privilege unwisely; whereas, if they were calm and dispassionate they wouldn't make such claims," Griswold explained. "We must understand the claims," he continued, "they are evidently not guilty of espionage."

Williams, a former Defense Department counsel, and like Griswold author of a pamphlet titled "The Fifth Amendment," had too main criticisms.

First, he contended that the clause in the Bill of Rights stating, "no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" contradicted the principle of compelling a party to give what testimony he is capable of giving.

His second, and main assertion, was that "adverse inference could be drawn from silence, because if a person is innocent, he can usually explain himself out of trouble."

Griswold countered by saying that just as wives are not asked to testify against their husbands, and priests are not asked to testify about their parishioners, neither should an individual be compelled to testify against himself.