Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 732.0

524US2

Unit: $U97

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

687

Opinion of the Court

that would prosecute any crime under its laws that might
thereby be revealed, id., at 87. The court’s holding that the
privilege could be invoked in such circumstances does not,
however, support a general application of the privilege in
any case in which a witness fears prosecution under foreign
law by a party not before the court. Thus, Murphy went
too far in saying that McRae overruled King of the Two Sici-
lies.10 See Murphy, 378 U. S., at 71. What is of more fun-
damental importance, however, is that even if McRae had
announced a new development in English law going to the
heart of King of the Two Sicilies, it would have been irrele-
vant to Fifth Amendment interpretation. The presumed
inﬂuence of English law on the intentions of the Framers
hardly invests the Framers with clairvoyance, and subse-
quent English developments are not attributable to the
Framers by some rule of renvoi. Cf. Brown, 161 U. S., at
600 (citing Cathcart v. Robinson, 5 Pet. 264, 280 (1831)).
Since McRae neither stated nor implied any disagreement
with Lord Cranworth’s 1857 statement in King of the Two
Sicilies that there was no clear prior authority on the
question, the Murphy Court had no authority showing that
Murdock rested on unsound historical assumptions contra-
dicted by opinions of the English courts.

10 Murphy also cites Heriz v. Riera, 11 Sim. 318, 59 Eng. Rep. 896 (1840),
as support for the claim that the English rule allowed invocation of the
privilege based on fear of prosecution abroad. See 378 U. S., at 63.
In
that case two Spanish women brought suit in England alleging that the
defendant had violated a contract that he entered into with their brother
and to which they were entitled to the proceeds as his heirs. The contract
provided that the plaintiffs’ brother (and they as his heirs) were entitled
to a share of the proceeds from a mercantile contract with the Spanish
Government. The defendant responded that the contract was illegal
under the laws of Spain and hence unenforceable and resisted discovery
because his answers might incriminate him under the Spanish code. The
court accepted the defendant’s plea, though it is unclear whether the court
ruled on the merits of the plaintiffs’ claim or the self-incrimination issue.
See Grant, Federalism and Self-Incrimination, 5 UCLA L. Rev. 1, 2 (1958).