Spevack v. Klein

1967-01-23

Headline: Court bars disbarment for asserting the Fifth Amendment; it overruled a prior decision and reversed an attorney’s disbarment, protecting lawyers who refuse to produce records or testify when that would be self-incriminating.

Holding: The Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination applies to the States and to lawyers, and an attorney may not be disbarred for invoking that privilege when testimony or records would incriminate him.

Real World Impact:

Prevents disbarment for lawyers who invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Extends Fifth Amendment protection to state actions involving lawyers.
Leaves unresolved whether required record‑keeping rules can compel certain documents.

Topics: self-incrimination, lawyer discipline, attorney records, state constitutional rights

Summary

Background

A New York lawyer refused a subpoena duces tecum (a court order to produce documents) and declined to testify at a disciplinary inquiry, saying that handing over the financial records or answering questions would incriminate him. State courts disbarred him, relying on an earlier Supreme Court decision and on rules about required records. The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the earlier case survived later rulings that applied the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination to the States.

Reasoning

The Court concluded that later decisions had absorbed the Fifth Amendment privilege into the Fourteenth Amendment and that the privilege applies to lawyers just as it does to other people. The majority said disbarment and the loss of a livelihood are powerful forms of compulsion that make claiming the privilege “costly,” and therefore a lawyer cannot be punished by disbarment for invoking the privilege. The Court overruled the earlier contrary decision and reversed the disbarment. The Court did not fully decide whether narrowly focused rules that require certain records to be kept could override the privilege in different circumstances.

Real world impact

The ruling protects attorneys from automatic disbarment for refusing to give testimony or hand over documents that would tend to incriminate them. It extends the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination to state disciplinary proceedings involving lawyers, while leaving open questions about narrowly tailored required‑records rules and other specific situations.

Dissents or concurrances

Justices Harlan and White dissented, arguing that a State may deny or revoke a license when silence prevents assessment of fitness and that disbarment could be permissible; Justice Fortas concurred in the judgment but drew narrower distinctions.