Yes, the Star Chamber was exactly what I was referring to (I even wrote it but ended up erasing it). Your arguments don't follow, though. First, you say: > It

Yes, the Star Chamber was exactly what I was referring to (I even wrote it but ended up erasing it). Your arguments don't follow, though. First, you say: > It's about a belief that it's immoral to put someone under oath (to God) and pit himself against himself and then you say > It's about as close to a human right as you could find in that age First, something being immoral doesn't imply that the opposite of it is a human right. Many people believe revenge is immoral but don't believe it to be a violation of their human rights. Not donating to charity might be immoral to many people but they wouldn't consider there to be a human right to take money from others. etc. Second, we're not talking about English law either. These people were fleeing from English law and establishing their religious freedom. So it's fair to assume their biggest worry in the 5th amendment wasn't religion or God, but rather the government. And third, your own source contradicts what you said. They clearly say courts relied on the the maxim (that “no man is bound to accuse himself”) as a protest against the unjust methods used to extract confessions. i.e., it wasn't that they viewed it as a human right in any sense, but that they began to invoke this maxim to avoid extracting forced (and hence potentially false) confessions. Which supports exactly what I said. (And note the use of "unjust" rather than "immoral" -- it's not about morality, but about administering justice. Religion and morality weren't new concepts then, and it's not like they avoided it initially due to moral reasons or suddenly avoided it due to feeling guilty.) I don't have time to make a longer response to the rest of what you said, but the negative wording itself is further evidence that they were worried about government behavior and not trying to declare what is considered a fundamental human right (or trying to even "advisingly" prescribe good behavior for private individuals for that matter). I'm baffled at how you say things that align directly with this and then draw the opposite conclusions. If you're going to use the state constitutions as evidence, they're not going to be evidence for what the federal Constitution says. They can of course be evidence for what they themselves say, and nowhere do I argue that state constitutions do or don't declare anything as a fundamental right.