Selective Service v. Minnesota Public Interest Research Group

Several authors writing in law journals soon after Selective Service responded with alarm. Hence Anthony L. Cogswell concluded a 1985 article in the Thurgood Marshall Law Review with the statement "It is possible that Selective Service System may have a chilling effect on claims brought under the Fifth Amendment." Cheryl V. Cunningham, writing in the Loyola Law Review, sounded a more muted tone: noting that the case "marks a retreat from the course paved in the 1960s by a Court then more prone to expand the privilege against self-incrimination," she went on to say that "Most probably, Minnesota Public Interest Research Group will not arouse the concern it deserves." By and large, this statement has proven true, as very few Supreme Court cases in subsequent years have drawn on the Court's judgment in this one. The end of the Cold War in the period from 1989 to 1992 helped to reduce concern about the draft, though subsequent U.S. police actions in Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, and other locales have served to raise it again.