Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46 (1947) was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the incorporation of the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Background

Adamson had refused to testify on his behalf during his trial on charges of first-degree murder. Prosecutors, pursuant to California law, highlighted this fact to the jury, which eventually returned a guilty verdict. Adamson appealed, arguing that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment made the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination applicable to state courts.

The Court majority rejected this claim, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment did not automatically incorporate the entire Bill of Rights against the states. In this view, only those rights which are seen as fundamental or essential to "ordered liberty" are protected by the Due Process Clause.

The case is known largely for the dissent of Justice Hugo Black, who through a deep analysis of the Fourteenth Amendment's history, called for a total incorporation approach. Black argued that the Amendment was crafted specifically for the purpose of applying the Bill of Rights to the states, and that the Court had unnecessarily thwarted this goal in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1872.

Justice Frank Murphy went further than Black and argued that the Due Process Clause incorporated not only all the rights listed in the Bill of Rights, but other fundamental rights as well (as per the Ninth Amendment).

The Court eventually reversed itself on the issue in later cases, and today the protections of the Fifth Amendment (except the grand jury clause) apply to the states as well as the federal government.