Cite as: 536 U. S. 24 (2002)
Stevens, J., dissenting
which had rejected the once-prevailing view that a prison inmate had no more rights than a "slave of the State," 5 the prisoners sought to extend those holdings to require judicial review of "any substantial deprivation imposed by prison authorities." The Court recognized that after Wolff and its progeny, convicted felons retain "a variety of important rights that the courts must be alert to protect." Although Meachum refused to expand the constitutional rights of inmates, we did not narrow the protection of any established right. Indeed, Justice White explicitly limited the holding to prison conditions that "do not otherwise violate the Constitution," 427 U. S., at 224.6
Not a word in our discussion of the privilege in Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard, 523 U. S. 272 (1998), ante, at 43, requires a heightened showing of compulsion in the prison context to establish a Fifth Amendment violation. That case is wholly unlike this one because Woodard was not ordered to incriminate himself and was not punished for refusing to do so. He challenged Ohio's clemency procedures, arguing, inter alia, that an interview with members of the clemency board offered to inmates one week before their clemency hearing presented him with a Hobson's choice that violated the privilege against self-incrimination. He could either take advantage of the interview and risk incriminating himself, or decline the interview, in which case the clemency board might draw adverse inferences from his decision not to testify. We concluded that the prisoner who was offered "a voluntary interview" is in the same position as
5 See Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S. 215, 231 (1976) (Stevens, J., dissenting).
6 In his opinion for the Court in the companion case, Montanye v. Haymes, 427 U. S. 236, 242 (1976), Justice White reiterated this point: "As long as the conditions or degree of confinement to which the prisoner is subjected are within the sentence imposed upon him and [are] not otherwise violative of the Constitution, the Due Process Clause does not in itself subject an inmate's treatment by prison authorities to judicial oversight."
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