UCR Department of History Presents

Professor Elise Wang
Department of English, Comparative Literature & Linguistics at Cal State Fullerton

The history of the right not to incriminate oneself, the basis of the 5th Amendment, be-gins in the 17th century. But the right to remain silent began much earlier in the popular imagination, and—though it has never been codified—to this day asserts itself in and against the law. This talk will trace the medieval emergence of this right in felony proce-dure through the practice of “standing mute,” when an accused came to the bar to plead but said nothing instead. I argue that while justices characterized this practice as recalci-trance or disobedience, they had to contend with a public who considered standing mute an expression of rightful control over one’s own voice, a perception we can only see with the help of public literature from the time. I will focus on an example from the closest we can get to popular media—the annual Mystery Plays—that I think outline a popular con-ception of a prerogative to one’s own voice, even above the law