Word: griswold
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Legislative committees have "thrown out the window nearly every safeguard which has been developed over the centuries by our courts," Law School Dean Erwin N. Griswold told the Connecticut Bar Association yesterday. Thus, "instead of decrying the Fifth Amendment we may well feel satisfaction at the protection the Amendment has given to individual standing alone," he said in the Hartford address...
While our courts "are for the most part well run," Griswold continued. "We are told that a legislative committee is not a court, and that court rules do not apply," But risks are nonetheless very great in such investigations, and thus, "even greater safeguards should be imposed...
...Griswold admitted that most legislators are "thoroughly conscientious and competent citizens." But all legislators are of necessity involved in politics, he pointed out. While "politics is surely one of the most important activities in a democracy," those involved in the activity are naturally concerned with attracting voters...
...harrassed witness, who has no confidence in the committee before which he is testifying, there is only one recourse, the Fifth Amendment. Griswold described it as "very nearly a lone sure rock in a time of storm. . . . It has . . . been a symbol of the ultimate moral sense of the community, upholding the best in us, when otherwise, there was a good deal of wavering under the pressure of the times...
...emphasized that, he did not consider every witness who used the amendment as "lily white." In fact, he added, "many of them are surely quite black." But at the same time, Griswold noted that there are not only two alternative reasons for use of the amendment--guilt...