The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on 15 December 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, enumerates several distinct protections against the power of the federal government in criminal and civil proceedings. Its provisions include the requirement of grand jury indictment for serious criminal charges, the prohibition on double jeopardy, the privilege against compelled self-incrimination, the guarantee of due process of law, and the requirement that the government pay just compensation when it takes private property for public use. The amendment applies to the federal government directly and has been incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
The amendment contains five principal clauses, each addressing a distinct legal concern:
Each of the amendment's major clauses carries active legal and scholarly controversy.
The self-incrimination clause has generated debate over its scope in the modern era. Courts have extended its protections to police interrogations through Miranda v. Arizona (1966), a ruling that remains contested on originalist grounds. Whether the privilege extends to compelled decryption of digital devices - requiring a suspect to provide a password or biometric access - is an open and actively litigated question. Some courts have ruled such compulsion is testimonial and thus protected; others have found it is not. See the debate page.
The Takings Clause became particularly contentious after the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London (2005), which held that transfer of private property to another private party for economic development could constitute a permissible “public use.” Critics argued the ruling effectively nullified the constitutional limit on eminent domain; defenders maintained it reflected appropriate deference to legislative judgment. See the debate page.
Substantive due process - the doctrine that the Due Process Clause protects unenumerated rights from government interference - is among the most disputed concepts in American constitutional law. Originalists and textualists generally argue the clause is procedural only; others contend it provides a textual basis for rights the Court has recognized, including privacy and certain liberty interests. The Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization revisited this doctrine directly. See the debate page.
There is broad legal consensus on the core procedural applications of the Fifth Amendment within established case law, though that consensus is itself contested by originalist and textualist scholars who dispute the interpretive foundations of many landmark rulings. No single legal consensus page currently exists for this topic.