Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 734.0

524US2

Unit: $U97

[09-06-00 19:37:28] PAGES PGT: OPIN

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

689

Opinion of the Court

D
Although the Court and Justice Breyer’s dissent differ
on details, including some considerations of policy addressed
in Part IV, infra, our basic disagreement with that dissent
turns on three points. First, we start with what we think
is the most probable reading of the Clause in its Fifth
Amendment context, as limiting its principle to concern with
prosecution by a sovereign that is itself bound by the Clause;
the dissent instead emphasizes the Clause’s facial breadth as
consistent with a broader principle. Second, we rely on the
force of our precedent, notably Murdock, as conﬁrming this
same-sovereign principle, as adapted to reﬂect the post-
Malloy requirement of immunity effective against both sov-
ereigns subject to the one privilege under the National Con-
stitution; the dissent attributes less force to Murdock, giving
weight to its tension with the Saline Bank language, among
other things. Third, we reject Murphy’s restatement of the
common-law background and read none of the common-law
cases as authority inconsistent with our contextual reading
of the Clause, later conﬁrmed by precedent such as Murdock;
the dissent ﬁnds support in the common-law cases for Mur-
phy’s historical reexamination and the broader reading of the
Clause.
In the end, our contextual reading of the Clause,
combined with the Murdock holding, places a burden on any-

formally adopted the rule in Murphy” (footnotes omitted)); Capra, The
Fifth Amendment and the Risk of Foreign Prosecution, N. Y. L. J., Mar.
8, 1991, p. 3 (“[D]espite Justice Goldberg’s assertions in Murphy, it is clear
that there was never a ‘true’ or uniform English rule. . . . [T]o the extent
that the English rule would be pertinent to the Fifth Amendment privi-
lege, it would have had to exist at the time the Fifth Amendment was
adopted. Yet, as even Justice Goldberg admitted in Murphy, the English
cases involving independent sovereigns were decided more than 60 years
after the Fifth Amendment was adopted”); see also Law Reform Commit-
tee, Sixteenth Report, 1967, Cmnd. 3472, ¶11, p. 7 (explaining that English
common law on the question is not “wholly consistent”).

Murphy’s reexamination of history also adopted the illegitimate reading

of Saline Bank, rejected supra, at 678–679.