Why on Earth does this law exist? .... What sort of society is that supposed to foster?
The right not to self-incriminate is an absolutely essential one if you value not living in a police state. Having the legal duty to self-incriminate would effectively cancel presumption of innocence and shift the burden of proof from the prosecution onto the defense.
Suppose "not talking" or giving false information as a suspect would be in itself a crime. The cops could just walk up to anyone and basically blackmail people into admitting things without any actual investigation or evidence. This would work especially well if the punishment for "not talking" or giving false information was disproportionate to the underlying crime. Say you do something that's punishable by 3 years, but lying about doing it is punishable by 20 years. As the defendant you're now facing a pretty lopsided and self-evidently malicious choice. People might start admitting to things they didn't even actually do, just to avoid the penalty for not talking.
Another argument is that not admitting to a crime is already an integral part of doing the crime. Criminalizing not admitting to it separately and on top of the actual crime would be like criminalizing running away from the crime scene on top of committing the crime itself. You may get extra points for surrendering peacefully, turning yourself in or pleading guilty (early enough in the process) and perhaps get a reduction of the default sentence, but not doing so should not carry an extra penalty.
I think the "making **** up" shows exactly how much power the court has. To interpret laws almost at random.
The 1966 case of "rights of suspects against self-incrimination" was decided 5-4. It could have gone either way, but is now so fundamental it's the first thing a person is told when arrested.
It also seems absurd that it requires a supreme court ruling to establish the "right to counsel" e.g.
Abortion is another absurdity. To my knowledge there are no recent amendments mentioning this. So 'ancient scriptures' - back when abortion was not a medical option - are interpreted by 9 people instead of the democratically elected politicians.
Yes, well this maybe nitpicking, but that doesn't make the US SC more
powerful than its German, Italian or Czech counterparts. They all have these powers. The "only difference" is that the American political system is less flexible and America hasn't had a revolution since at least 1865, or possibly never even had one. Lots of civil rights in Europe came about as a result of a revolution or even several (most of continental Europe), a credible threat of one (UK). America wasn't devastated by two world wars, it avoided a dictatorship during the Great Depression. There wasn't really any massive systemic and institutional failure, where they would just start from a scratch with a fresh new ideology, consitution and lessons what to avoid in the future etc. America has always worked well enough to make a large part of its population think that no change is really needed.
On top of that, you can't underestimate the effect of American federalism. Your typical European country is a unitary state with one government that almost always also controls the legislature, so whatever it says, goes. The American constitution, on the other hand, gives the federal government a fairly limited playing field in the first place. Many things are simply not possible for the Congress or president to do without amending the constitution - e.g. gay marriage. The federal Congress has no jurisdiction over family law, it can't make a law that allows or prohibits gay marriage. It had to be the Court to state that the individual state laws violate an already existing federal right.