The U.S. Supreme Court case Arndstein v. McCarthy in 1920 revolved around the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination and its application to bankruptcy proceedings. The petitioner, Samuel Arndstein, was a bankrupt individual who refused to answer certain questions during his bankruptcy hearing on the grounds that his responses could incriminate him criminally. He was held in contempt of court for this refusal and appealed the decision all the way up to the Supreme Court. In a landmark ruling, Justice Louis Brandeis delivered an opinion stating that individuals cannot be compelled to provide testimony in any civil proceeding if it may lead to criminal prosecution under federal law - extending this constitutional right beyond just criminal cases into civil matters like bankruptcy as well. This effectively broadened interpretations of Fifth Amendment protections by establishing that they apply universally across all legal proceedings where there is potential risk of self-incrimination.

In the dissenting opinion for Arndstein v. McCarthy, Justice Pitney argued that the majority's decision to grant habeas corpus relief to a bankrupt individual who refused to answer questions on his assets was incorrect. He believed that such refusal should not be protected by the Fifth Amendment right against self-incincrimination as it would undermine bankruptcy proceedings and allow fraudulent debtors to escape liability. According to him, this privilege only applies when there is a real danger of incriminating oneself in criminal prosecution, which he did not see present in this case. Furthermore, he pointed out that if every debtor could refuse answering any question about their property under oath based on potential self-incrimination risk, then no effective examination could ever take place during bankruptcy cases - thus defeating its purpose entirely.