No. of Recommendations: 2
So prior to the 14th, you could be compelled to testify against yourself (at the state level), yes? (for example)
It's more accurate to say that the U.S. Constitution didn't protect you against that. But every state had its own constitution, yes.
Without the 14th, they could beat a confession out of me, and I would have no recourse. Amazed it took 100 years for them to think of that.
You have to remember that the U.S. didn't start off as a single country, even after Independence. We were a confederation of independent countries. They were called "States" (and three "Commonwealths"), but they were functionally their own countries - with their own legislatures and armed forces and constitutions. The "U.S." was an experiment in finding a middle ground between a single nation (like, say, France) and a collection of purely independent nations with shared economic and military agreements (like, say, the European Common Market/NATO). The Articles of Confederation were very much more towards the independent nation side of things.
But even the early Constitution was not understood as creating a singular nation state in the model of France or England. The States very much remained separate sovereign entities. The "police power" of government did not wholly or entirely rest with the national government - there are governmental powers that are vested only in the States, that the federal government cannot intrude upon. Culturally and socially, the States were also very much more considered to be like sovereign countries than they are in modern times.
So you would look to your state constitution to protect your rights to not have a confession beaten out of you. The idea that the federal government would be relevant to that question would have been kind of silly - the federal government was more like the EU's relationship to the citizens of Germany, and not really the government level that would affect a routine criminal case.
