Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
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[09-06-00 19:37:28] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)

679

Opinion of the Court

administering the state law.”
201 U. S., at 69. The state
law, which addresses prosecutions brought by the State, sug-
gested the rule that the Saline Bank Court applied to the
case before it; the law provided that “no disclosure made by
any party defendant to such suit in equity, and no books or
papers exhibited by him in answer to the bill, or under the
order of the Court, shall be used as evidence against him in
any . . . prosecution under this law,” quoted in 1 Pet., at 104.
Saline Bank, then, may have turned on a reading of state
statutory law. Cf. McNaughton, Self-Incrimination Under
Foreign Law, 45 Va. L. Rev. 1299, 1305–1306 (1959) (suggest-
ing that Saline Bank represents “an application not of the
privilege against self-incrimination . . . but of the principle
that equity will not aid a forfeiture”). But see Ballmann,
supra, at 195 (Holmes, J.) (suggesting that Saline Bank is a
Fifth Amendment case, though this view was soon repudi-
ated by the Court in Hale, as just noted).

Where Saline Bank is laconic, Ballmann is equivocal.
While Ballmann speciﬁcally argued only the danger of in-
criminating himself under state law as his basis for invoking
the privilege in a federal proceeding, and we upheld his claim
of privilege, our opinion indicates that we concluded that
Ballmann might have had a fear of incrimination under fed-
eral law as well as under state law. While we did suggest,
contrary to the Murdock rule, that Ballmann might have
been able to invoke the privilege based on a fear of state
prosecution, the opinion says only that “[o]ne way or the
other [due to the risk of incrimination under federal or state
law] we are of opinion that Ballmann could not be required
to produce his cash book if he set up that it would tend to
criminate him.” 200 U. S., at 195–196. At its equivocal
worst, Ballmann reigned for only two months. Hale v.
Henkel explained that “the only danger to be considered is
one arising within the same jurisdiction and under the same
sovereignty,” 201 U. S., at 69, and Ballmann and Saline