28 SAUNDERS v. UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE WALSH was regarded as a very useful medium of an untrammelled investigation into the life of the accused. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England the oath ex officio was employed even by the Court of Star Chamber to detect those who dared to criticise the King. Opposition to the oath became so widespread that there gradually emerged the common law doctrine that a man had a privilege to refuse to testify against himself, not simply in respect of the special kind of procedures already referred to, but also through evolution of the common law, as a principle to be upheld in ordinary criminal trials also. The principle was that "a man could not be made the deluded instrument of his own conviction". In the American colonies the privilege was espoused with special fervour because of the interrogation abuses by colonial governors and before the American War of Independence it had already been adopted in seven different States in their own constitutions or bills of rights. Particularly it imposed useful restrictions upon the powers of colonial governors to question persons suspected of violating English commercial law as has been pointed out, especially those which regulated trade restrictions including smuggling, which was a popular activity. Privilege against obligatory self-incrimination was available to a witness in general investigation by an executive or Legislative commission because it acted as a very useful brake on an untrammelled power of investigation of some such bodies. It also ensured that fair trials could not be circumvented by the use of investigating bodies instead of by a trial in court. In effect, the categories of governmental investigation in which this privilege plays an especially important role are general investigations by executive agencies or such like bodies and the questioning of a suspect by the police and State agencies prior to criminal trials. So far as the investigators were concerned it was very early recognised that the privilege against self-incrimination would be of very little use or value if a man could be compelled to tell all to the authorities before a trial. In my opinion the privileged avoidance of self-incrimination extends further than answers which themselves will support a conviction. It must logically embrace all answers which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute a conviction. It is sufficient to sustain the privilege where it is evident from the implications of the questions and the setting in which they are asked that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation as to why it cannot be answered could also be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result. The question of privilege against self-incrimination has been much debated in decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and indeed in other superior courts in the United States of America. What is significant in the context of the present case is that, like many other provisions of the United States Bill of Rights, to a large extent the privilege against self-incrimination originated from the English common law as it applied in the American colonies before independence. It is worth recalling that in the travaux préparatoires of the European Convention the