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524US2

Unit: $U92

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412

SWIDLER & BERLIN v. UNITED STATES

O(cid:146)Connor, J., dissenting

States, 445 U. S. 40, 50 (1980) (internal quotation marks
omitted).

The attorney-client privilege promotes trust in the repre-
sentational relationship, thereby facilitating the provision of
legal services and ultimately the administration of justice.
See Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U. S. 383, 389 (1981).
The systemic beneﬁts of the privilege are commonly under-
stood to outweigh the harm caused by excluding critical evi-
dence. A privilege should operate, however, only where
“necessary to achieve its purpose,” see Fisher v. United
States, 425 U. S. 391, 403 (1976), and an invocation of the
attorney-client privilege should not go unexamined “when it
is shown that the interests of the administration of justice
can only be frustrated by [its] exercise,” Cohen v. Jenkin-
town Cab Co., 238 Pa. Super. 456, 464, 357 A. 2d 689, 693–
694 (1976).

I agree that a deceased client may retain a personal, repu-
tational, and economic interest in conﬁdentiality. See ante,
at 407. But, after death, the potential that disclosure will
harm the client’s interests has been greatly diminished, and
the risk that the client will be held criminally liable has
abated altogether. Thus, some commentators suggest that
terminating the privilege upon the client’s death “could not
to any substantial degree lessen the encouragement for free
1 J. Strong, McCormick
disclosure which is [its] purpose.”
on Evidence § 94, p. 350 (4th ed. 1992); see also Restatement
(Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers § 127, Comment d
(Proposed Final Draft No. 1, Mar. 29, 1996). This dimin-
ished risk is coupled with a heightened urgency for discovery
of a deceased client’s communications in the criminal context.
The privilege does not “protect disclosure of the underlying
facts by those who communicated with the attorney,” Up-
john, supra, at 395, and were the client living, prosecutors
could grant immunity and compel the relevant testimony.
After a client’s death, however, if the privilege precludes an
attorney from testifying in the client’s stead, a complete