WHY IS THERE a legitimate presump-
tion--although not conclusive--that a person who refuses
to answer a relevant question, put to him by one authorized
to ask such a question, on the ground that a truthful answer
would tend to incriminate him, is guilty of the charge? I
have argued that the justification lies in what we know
about the behavior of human beings who are innocent in
contradistinction to what we know of human beings who
are guilty. Bentham, more than a hundred years ago, re-
plied to Dean Griswold and to the several justices of the
United States Supreme Court whom the latter seems to have
influenced on this point:

From the faculty of putting these questions, what is it that
the defendant has to fear? It is this. From the known prin-
ciples of human nature, according to the course of observa-
tion common to all mankind, according to the result of a set
of observations, which it can scarce happen to a man to have
arrived at man's estate without having frequent occasions to
make--between delinquency, on the one hand, and silence, on
the other, there is a manifest connexion; a connexion too

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