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UNITED STATES v. BALSYS

Opinion of the Court

any extension would depend ultimately on an analysis of the
likely costs and beneﬁts of extending the privilege as Balsys
requests.
If such analysis were dispositive for us, we would
conclude that Balsys has not shown that extension of the
protection would produce a beneﬁt justifying the rule he
seeks.

The Court of Appeals directed careful attention to an eval-
uation of what would be gained and lost on Balsys’s view.
It concluded, for example, that few domestic cases would be
adversely affected by recognizing the privilege based upon
fear of foreign prosecution, 119 F. 3d, at 135–137; 17 that
American contempt sanctions for refusal to testify are so le-
nient in comparison to the likely consequences of foreign
prosecution that a witness would probably refuse to testify
even if the privilege were unavailable to him, id., at 142
(Block, J., concurring); that by statute and treaty the United
States could limit the occasions on which a reasonable fear
of foreign prosecution could be shown, as by modifying ex-
tradition and deportation standards in cases involving the
privilege, id., at 138–139; and that because a witness’s refusal
to testify may be used as evidence in a civil proceeding, de-
portation of people in Balsys’s position would not necessarily
be thwarted by recognizing the privilege as he claims it, id.,
at 136.

The Court of Appeals accordingly thought the net burden
of the expanded privilege too negligible to justify denying
its expansion. We remain skeptical, however. While we
will not attempt to comment on every element of the Court
of Appeals’s calculation, two of the points just noted would
present difﬁculty. First, there is a question about the stand-
ard that should govern any decision to justify a truly discre-
tionary ruling by making the assumption that it will induce
the Government to adopt legislation with international im-
plications or to seek international agreements, in order to

17 The assessment was, of course, necessarily based on experience under

the same-sovereign view of the privilege.