The right to silence in pre-trial investigations
| Author | Anna Pivaty,Ashlee Beazley |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20322844211028320 |
Editorial
New Journal of European Criminal Law
2021, Vol. 12(3) 325–327
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/20322844211028320
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The right to silence in pre-trial
investigations
‘Nemo tenetur se ipsum accusare.’Most of us are likely familiar with this Latin phrase, being as it is
the most basic expression of the right to remain silent. Yet how many of us know—without
consulting Wikipedia—that nemo tenetur was once a rallying cry for religious and political dis-
sidents in 16th-century England? In an age where ‘fake news’spreads with baffling speed, where
our privacy and digital integrity
1
are under increasing threat, and where we repeatedly observe that
our criminal justice systems are fuelled by bias, such history feels relatable and relevant. This
Special Issue, focusing as it does on the right to remain silent in pre-trial investigations, appears
particularly timely.
This Special Issue arises out of the work undertaken by the EmpRiSe project.
2
EmpRiSe
(‘Empiricial and Legal Research on the Right to Silence during Police Investigations’) is a col-
laboration between four universities—Maastricht University, Dublin City University, Antwerp
University and KU Leuven—which aims to study the right to silence in pre-trial investigations
across four European jurisdictions: the The Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Italy. Amongst the
research carried out during this project were four national reports on the legal status of the right to
silence during the investigative stage in each jurisdiction. It is from these national reports the
‘country articles’contained in this Issue are drawn.
In the article on Ireland, YvonneDaly sketches an overview of the operation of the right to silence
in the Irish legal system. Amongst Daly’sfindings is the observation that while the right to silence is
underpinned by both the Irish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, the
scope of the right has been curtailed by legislative provisions which allow, in defined circumstances,
for adverse inferences to be drawn from a suspect’s use of silence during the investigative stage.
Daly also draws attention to the haphazard nature of the (present) provision for legal assistance at
police interviews, and the effect this has on suspects’right to silence.
In ‘Keep Silence for Yourself’, Diletta Marchesi and Michele Panzavolta describe how the right
to silence operates at the investigative stage of Italian criminal proceedings. Noting that while the
right to silence stems directly from the protection of the Italian Constitution, the authors describe the
1See Johan Rochel, Connecting the Dots: Digital Integrity as a Human Right (2021) 21 Human Rights Law Review 358–
383, https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngaa063.
2EmpRiSe is a project funded by the EuropeanCommission (grant no. 802102) which is running from April 2019 to October
2021.
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