holding that "essentially regulatory" recordkeeping may be required of private individuals without violating the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination
How later courts described this case
- holding that "essentially regulatory" recordkeeping may be required of private individuals without violating the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination
- holding that records that are required by statute to be kept cannot be sheltered by the invocation of the Fifth Amendment
- holding that requiring essentially regulatory records to be kept by private individuals, subject to inspection by the government, does not violate the Fifth Amendment privilege
- holding that when Congress included provisions of Compulsory Testimony Act of 1893 in the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, it necessarily adopted “settled judicial construction” of the 1893 Act
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Jackson,
with whom Mr. Justice Murphy agrees,
dissenting.
The protection against compulsory self-incrimination, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, is nullified to whatever extent this Court holds that Congress may require a citizen to keep an account of his deeds and misdeeds and turn over or exhibit the record on demand of government inspectors, who then can use it to convict him. Today’s decision introduces a principle of considerable moment. Of course, it strips of protection only business men and their records; but we cannot too often remind ourselves of the tendency of such a principle, once approved, to expand itself in practice “to the limits of its logic.” That it has already expanded to cover a vast *71 area is apparent from the Court’s citation of twenty-six federal statutes that present parallels to the situation here under review. It would, no doubt, simplify enforcement of all criminal laws if each citizen were required to keep a diary that would show where he was at all times, with whom he was, and what he was up to. The decision of today, applying this rule not merely to records specially required under the Act but also to records “customarily kept,” invites and facilitates that eventuality.
The practice approved today obviously narrows the protections of the Fifth Amendment. We should not attribute to Congress such a purpose or intent unless it used language so mandatory and unmistakable that it left no alternative, and certainly should not base that inference on “legislative history” of such dubious meaning as exists in this case. Congress, if we give its language plain and usual meaning, has guarded the immunity so scrupulously as to raise no constitutional question. But if Congress had overstepped, we should have no hesitation in holding that the Government must lose some cases rather than the people lose their immunities from compulsory self-incrimination. However, in this case, the plain language of Congress requires no such choice. It does require, in my view, that this judgment be reversed.