Compelled Testimony: President Eisenhower Signs Bill to Limit Fifth Amendment
President Eisenhower on this day signed into law a bill that would compel witnesses in federal investigations to give testimony in return for immunity from prosecution.
The law was a product of the controversy that erupted in 1954 over the fact that many witnesses, most of them alleged Communists or “subversives,” claimed Fifth Amendment protection (rather than the riskier First Amendment) against testifying about their political beliefs and associations before HUAC and other legislative investigating bodies.
See, for example, a teacher who was fired for taking the Fifth on April 30, 1954.
As part of the controversy in 1954, Erwin Griswold, the dean of Harvard Law School, felt compelled to speak out and write a short book in defense of the ancient privilege of protection against self-incrimination. See February 5, 1954. On August 20, 1954, however, Congress knocked a big hole in the Fifth Amendment by enacting a law that allowed congressional committees to compel testimony in return a guarantee that they would not be prosecuted on the basis of any evidence in their testimony.
Read Dean Griswold’s book: Erwin N. Griswold, The 5th Amendment Today: Three Speeches (1955)
Learn more: Leonard Levy, Origins of the Fifth Amendment: The Right Against Self-incrimination (1968)
Read about the power to compel testimony