Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 762.0

524US2

Unit: $U97

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

717

Breyer, J., dissenting

dom,” ibid. (Ginsburg, J., dissenting), and it is that conduct,
not a foreign proceeding, that is at issue here.

B

If the policies and purposes that this Court has said under-
lie the Fifth Amendment—respect for individual dignity and
privacy, prevention of governmental overreaching, preserva-
tion of an accusatorial system of criminal justice—would all
be well served by applying the privilege when a witness le-
gitimately fears foreign prosecution, then what reason could
there be for reinterpreting the privilege so as not to recog-
nize it here?

Two reasons have been suggested: First, one might see a
government’s compulsion of testimony followed by its own
use of that testimony in a criminal prosecution as somewhat
more unfair than compulsion by one government and use by
another. And one might also ﬁnd the States and the Federal
Government so closely interconnected that the unfairness is
further diminished where the prosecuting sovereign is a for-
eign country.

But this factor, in my view, cannot be determinative. For
one thing, this issue of fairness is a matter of degree, not
kind. For another, changes in transportation and communi-
cation have made relationships among nations ever closer, to
the point where cooperation among international prosecutors
and police forces may be as great today as among the States
(or between the States and the Federal Government) a half
century ago. See supra, at 714–715 (discussing rise in inter-
national cooperation). Finally, this Court’s cases suggest
that the remaining considerations—particularly the inherent
indignity and cruelty to the individual in compelling self-
incrimination—bulk larger in terms of the basic values that
the Fifth Amendment reﬂects than does this single, partial,
fairness consideration. See supra, at 712–713 (citing cases).
I cannot agree that this particular feature—the fact that