It was important enough to the framers of the US Constitution to be included in the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights – that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. Today, that protection – famously known as “pleading the Fifth” – remains one of the most visible and politically charged safeguards in American law. It has seeped into the culture, too. “Pleading the Fifth” has become an idiom in the United States, used jokingly in casual...