It is, as is the entire Constitution, a statement of the limitations of authority of the federal government ... a "they shalt not." I have often imagined myself giving testimony and invoking my rights as referenced by the Fifth Amendment ... SOLELY to exercise that right and for no other purpose. I believe that exercising our rights needs no other apologetic.
That said ... I do not believe that any person holding an office of Public Trust should continue to hold that office, or any such office in the future, if they do not willingly and honestly bear witness in the appropriate forum (such as Congress) to the manner in which the Public's Interests were pursued ... or not.
I regard FindLaw's annotations regarding the Fifth Amendment to be lucid and revelatory.
SELF-INCRIMINATION
Development and ScopeSource of this clause was the maxim "
nemo tenetur seipsum accusare," that "no man is bound to accuse himself." The maxim is but one aspect of two different systems of law enforcement which competed in England for acceptance;
the accusatorial and the inquisitorial. In the accusatorial system, which predated the reign of Henry II but was expanded and extended by him, first the community and then the state by grand and petit juries proceeded against alleged wrongdoers through the examination of others, and in the early years through examination of the defendant as well.
The inquisitorial system, which developed in the ecclesiastical courts, compelled the alleged wrongdoer to affirm his culpability through the use of the oath ex officio. Under the oath, an official had the power to make a person before him take an oath to tell the truth to the full extent of his knowledge as to all matters about which he would be questioned; before administration of the oath the person was
not advised of the nature of the charges against him, or whether he was accused of crime, and was also
not informed of the nature of the questions to be asked.
The use of this oath in Star Chamber proceedings, especially to root out political heresies, combined with opposition to the ecclesiastical oath ex officio, led over a long period of time to general acceptance of the principle that a person could not be required to accuse himself under oath in any proceeding before an official tribunal seeking information looking to a criminal prosecution, or before a magistrate investigating an accusation against him with or without oath, or under oath in a court of equity or a court of common law. The precedents in the colonies are few in number, but following the Revolution six states had embodied the privilege against self-incrimination in their constitutions, and the privilege was one of those recommended by several state ratifying conventions for inclusion in a federal bill of rights. Madison's version of the clause read "nor shall be compelled to be a witness against himself," but upon consideration by the House an amendment was agreed to insert "in any criminal case" in the provision.
The historical studies cited demonstrate that in England and the colonies the privilege was narrower than the interpretation now prevailing, a common situation reflecting the gradual expansion, or occasional contracting, of constitutional guarantees based on the judicial application of the policies underlying the guarantees in the context of new factual patterns and practices. The difficulty is that the Court has generally failed to articulate the policy objectives underlying the privilege, usually citing a "complex of values" when it has attempted to state the interests served by it. Commonly mentioned in numerous cases was the assertion that the privilege was designed to protect the innocent and to further the search for truth. It appears now, however, that the Court has rejected both of these as inapplicable and has settled upon the principle that the clause serves two interrelated interests:
the preservation of an accusatorial system of criminal justice, which goes to the integrity of the judicial system, and the preservation of personal privacy from unwarranted governmental intrusion. In order to protect these interests and to preserve these values, the privilege "is not to be interpreted literally." Rather, the "sole concern (of the privilege) is, as its name indicates, with the danger to a witness forced to give testimony leading to the infliction of penalties affixed to the criminal acts."
"
The privilege afforded not only extends to answers that would in themselves support a conviction ... but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute ... (I)f the witness, upon interposing his claim, were required to prove the hazard ... he would be compelled to surrender the very protection which the privilege is designed to guarantee. To sustain the privilege, it need only be evident from the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked, that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result." Thus, a judge who would deny a claim of the privilege must be "'perfectly clear, from a careful consideration of all the circumstances in the case, that the witness is mistaken, and that the answer(s) cannot possibly have such tendency' to incriminate." The witness must have reasonable cause to apprehend danger from an answer, but he may not be the sole judge of the validity of his claim. While the trial judge may not require a witness to disclose so much of the danger as to render the privilege nugatory, he must determine whether there is a reasonable apprehension of incrimination by considering the circumstances of the case, his knowledge of matters surrounding the inquiry, and the nature of the evidence which is demanded from the witness. One must explicitly claim his privilege or he will be deemed to have waived it, and waiver may be found where the witness has answered some preliminary questions but desires to stop at a certain point.
(more)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/07.html#1 "
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."