The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides an important procedural protection for people who face prosecution. No person, it declares, may “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

This right does not apply only in the immediate context of a criminal trial. No judge, prosecutor, policeman, lawmaker or potentially aggrieved civil plaintiff can circumvent this protection. No one can compel someone suspected of a crime to answer potentially self-incriminating questions outside the courtroom or inside it.