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UNITED STATES v. BALSYS

Opinion of the Court

limitation on the privilege, the Murphy Court expressed a
comparatively ambitious conceptualization of personal pri-
vacy underlying the Clause, one capable of supporting, if not
demanding, the scope of protection that Balsys claims. As
the Court of Appeals recognized, if we take the Murphy
opinion at face value, the expansive rationale can be claimed
quite as legitimately as the Murdock-Malloy-Kastigar un-
derstanding of Murphy’s result, and Balsys’s claim accord-
ingly requires us to decide whether Murphy’s innovative
side is as sound as its traditional one. We conclude that it
is not.

As support for the view that the Court had previously mis-
understood the English rule, Murphy relied, ﬁrst, on two
preconstitutional English cases, East India Co. v. Campbell,
1 Ves. sen. 246, 27 Eng. Rep. 1010 (Ex. 1749), and Brown-
sword v. Edwards, 2 Ves. sen. 243, 28 Eng. Rep. 157
(Ch. 1750), for the proposition that a witness in an English
court was permitted to invoke the privilege based on fear of
prosecution in a foreign jurisdiction. See 378 U. S., at 58–
59. Neither of these cases is on point as holding that propo-
In East India Co., a defendant before the
sition, however.
Court of Exchequer, seeking to avoid giving an explanation
for his possession of certain goods, claimed the privilege on
the ground that his testimony might subject him to a ﬁne or
corporal punishment. The Court of Exchequer found that
the defendant would be punishable in Calcutta, then an Eng-
lish Colony, and said it would “not oblige one to discover
that, which, if he answers in the afﬁrmative, will subject him
to the punishment of a crime.”
1 Ves. sen., at 247, 27 Eng.
Rep., at 1011.
In Brownsword, a defendant before the
Court of Chancery claimed the privilege on the ground that
her testimony could render her liable to prosecution in an
English ecclesiastical court.
“The general rule,” the court
said, “is that no one is bound to answer so as to subject him-
self to punishment, whether that punishment arises by the
2 Ves. sen., at 245, 28 Eng.
ecclesiastical law of the land.”