Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 78

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

7 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

for serious crimes can only be instituted by ‘a presentment 
or indictment of a Grand Jury.’ ”  Calandra, supra, at 343. 
Given  the  popularity  and  prevalence  of  grand  juries  at 
the time, the Founders must have been intimately familiar 
with  the  tools  they  used—including  compulsory  process—
to accomplish their work.  As a matter of tradition, grand
juries  were  “accorded  wide  latitude  to  inquire  into  viola-
tions of criminal law,” including the power to “compel the
production  of  evidence  or  the  testimony  of  witnesses  as
[they] conside[r] appropriate.”  Ibid.  Long before national
independence  was  achieved,  grand  juries  were  already 
using their broad inquisitorial  powers not only to present 
and  indict  criminal  suspects  but  also  to  inspect  public
buildings, to levy taxes, to supervise the administration of
the  laws,  to  advance  municipal  reforms  such  as  street
repair and bridge maintenance, and in some cases even to 
propose  legislation.    Younger,  supra,  at  5–26.  Of  course, 
such  work  depended  entirely  on  grand  juries’  ability  to 
access any relevant documents.

Grand  juries  continued  to  exercise  these  broad  inquisi-
torial  powers  up  through  the  time  of  the  founding.    See 
Blair  v.  United  States,  250  U. S.  273,  280  (1919)  (“At  the 
foundation  of  our  Federal  Government  the  inquisitorial
function of the grand jury and the compulsion of witnesses 
were recognized as incidents of the judicial power”).  In a 
series  of  lectures  delivered  in  the  early  1790’s,  Justice
James Wilson crowed that grand juries were “the peculiar
boast  of  the  common  law”  thanks  in  part  to  their  wide-
ranging authority: “All the operations of government, and 
of  its  ministers  and  officers,  are  within  the  compass  of 
their view and research.”  2 J. Wilson, The Works of James 
Wilson  534,  537  (R.  McCloskey  ed.  1967).    That  reflected 
the  broader  insight  that  “[t]he  grand  jury’s  investigative 
power  must  be  broad  if  its  public  responsibility  is  ade-
quately to be discharged.”  Calandra, supra, at 344. 

Compulsory  process  was  also  familiar  to  the  founding