Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 740

524US2

Unit: $U97

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

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

695

Opinion of the Court

even though the constitutional privilege against self-
incrimination is applicable to each. This has become
especially true in our age of ‘cooperative federalism,’
where the Federal and State Governments are waging
a united front against many types of criminal activity.”
378 U. S., at 55–56 (citation and internal quotation
marks omitted).

Since in this case there is no analog of Malloy, imposing
the Fifth Amendment beyond the National Government,
there is no premise in Murphy for appealing to “cooperative
internationalism” by analogy to “cooperative federalism.” 16
Any analogy must, instead, be to the pre-Murphy era when
the States were not bound by the privilege. Then, testi-
mony compelled in a federal proceeding was admissible in a
state prosecution, despite the fact that shared values and
similar criminal statutes of the state and national jurisdic-
tions presumably furnished incentive for overreaching by the
Government to facilitate criminal prosecutions in the States.
But even if Murphy were authority for considering “coop-
erative federalism” and “cooperative internationalism” as
reasons supporting expansion of the scope of the privilege,

16 There is indeed nothing comparable to the Fifth Amendment privi-
lege in any supranational prohibition against compelled self-incrimination
derived from any source, the privilege being “at best an emerging prin-
ciple of international law.” See Amann, A Whipsaw Cuts Both Ways,
45 UCLA L. Rev. 1201, 1259 (1998) (hereinafter Amann).

In the course of discussing the Eleventh Circuit case raising the same
issue as this one, Amann suggests nonetheless that the whipsaw rationale
has particular salience on these facts because along with the United
States, Lithuania and Israel are signatories to the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, Dec. 16, 1966, G. A. Res. 2200, which rec-
ognizes something akin to the privilege. See Amann 1233, n. 206. The
signiﬁcance of being bound by the Covenant, however, is limited by its
provision that the privilege is derogable and accordingly may be infringed
if public emergency necessitates.
In any event,
Balsys has made no claim under the Covenant, and its current enforceabil-
ity in the courts of the signatories is an issue that is not before us.

Id., at 1259, n. 354.