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. Its decision is part of a long line of cases that eventually led to the Selective Incorporation Doctrine. Background In Adamson v. California, Admiral Dewey Adamson (his given name, not a military rank) was charged with first-degree murder but chose not to testify on his own behalf because he knew the prosecutor would impeach him with questions about his prior criminal record. The prosecutor then argued that refusal to testify could be seen as an admission of guilt under a California statute that allowed the jury to infer guilt in such cases. On appeal, however, Adamson's attorney Morris Lavine argued that Adamson's freedom against self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment had been violated. He argued that because the prosecutor had drawn attention to Adamson's refusal to testify, his freedom against self-incrimination had been violated. Decision In the majority opinion written by Justice Stanley Forman Reed, the Supreme Court found that while Adamson's rights may have been violated had the case been tried in federal court, the rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment did not extend to state courts based on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Reed stated succinctly, "It is settled law that the clause of the Fifth Amendment, protecting a person against being compelled to be a witness against himself, is not made effective by the Fourteenth Amendment as a protection against state action on the ground that freedom from testimonial compulsion is a right of national citizenship...." Justice Reed based his decision, in part, on the Court's 1937 decision in Palko v. Connecticut in which the Court found that the Fifth Amendment's protection against double jeopardy did not apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment and the Court's 1908 decision in Twining v. New Jersey. Frankfurter's concurrence Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote a concurrence, arguing that incorporation of the Bill of Rights by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would "tear up by the roots much of the fabric of law in the several States, and would deprive the States of opportunity for reforms in legal process designed for extending the area of freedom." He ended, "It seems pretty late in the day to suggest that a phrase so laden with historic meaning should be given