Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
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Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)

675

Opinion of the Court

States, 403 U. S. 713, 716 (1971) (per curiam) (Black, J., con-
curring) (emphasis deleted), was expressed early on in Chief
Justice Marshall’s opinion for the Court in the leading case
of Barron ex rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243,
247 (1833): the Constitution’s “limitations on power . . . are
naturally, and, we think, necessarily applicable to the gov-
ernment created by the instrument,” and not to “distinct
[state] governments, framed by different persons and for dif-
ferent purposes.”

To be sure, it would have been logically possible to decide
(as in Barron) that the “distinct [state] governments . .
.
framed . . . for different purposes” were beyond the ambit of
the Fifth Amendment, and at the same time to hold that the
self-incrimination privilege, good against the National Gov-
ernment, was implicated by fear of prosecution in another
jurisdiction. But after Barron and before the era of Four-
teenth Amendment incorporation, that would have been an
unlikely doctrinal combination, and no such improbable de-
velopment occurred.

The precursors of today’s case were those raising the ques-
tion of the signiﬁcance for the federal privilege of possible
use of testimony in state prosecution. Only a handful of
early cases even touched on the problem.
In Brown v.
Walker, 161 U. S. 591 (1896), a witness raised the issue,
claiming the privilege in a federal proceeding based on his
fear of prosecution by a State, but we found that a statute
under which immunity from federal prosecution had been
conferred provided for immunity from state prosecution as
well, obviating any need to reach the issue raised.
Id., at
606–608.
In Jack v. Kansas, 199 U. S. 372 (1905), a Four-
teenth Amendment case, we afﬁrmed a sentence for con-
tempt imposed on a witness in a state proceeding who had
received immunity from state prosecution but refused to an-
swer questions based on a fear that they would subject him
to federal prosecution. Although there was no reasonable
fear of a prosecution by the National Government in that