Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
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524US2

Unit: $U97

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688

UNITED STATES v. BALSYS

Opinion of the Court

In sum, to the extent that the Murphy majority went
beyond its response to Malloy and undercut Murdock’s ra-
tionale on historical grounds, its reasoning cannot be ac-
cepted now. Long before today, indeed, Murphy’s history
was shown to be fatally ﬂawed.11

11 Murphy, 378 U. S., at 81, n. 1 (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment)
(“The English rule is not clear”); United States v. (Under Seal), 794 F.
2d, at 927 (“The Court’s scholarship with respect to English law in this
regard has been attacked, see Note, 69 Va. L. Rev. at 893-94 . . . . We do
not enter the dispute as to whether Murphy represents a correct state-
ment of the English rule at a particular time because we do not think
that the Murphy holding depended upon the correctness of the Court’s
understanding of the state of English law and reliance thereon as the sole
basis for decision. Rather, Murphy proceeds as a logical consequence to
the holding in Malloy v. Hogan . . .”); Note, Fifth Amendment Privilege
Against Self-Incrimination and Fear of Foreign Prosecution, 96 Colum.
L. Rev. 1940, 1944–1946, 1949, and nn. 79–81 (1996) (“The uncertainty of
English law on [the question whether the privilege can be invoked based
on fear of prosecution] casts doubt on the Supreme Court’s holding in Mur-
phy, which was based on the assertion that McRae ‘represents the settled
“English rule” regarding self-incrimination under foreign law.’
Indeed,
the Murphy Court’s reliance on its idea of the ‘true’ English rule has been
criticized by commentators, and its reading of British law was essentially
overruled by the British Parliament. Murphy’s reliance on mistaken
interpretation and application of English law weakens its precedential
value” (footnotes omitted)); Note, The Reach of the Fifth Amendment
Privilege When Domestically Compelled Testimony May Be Used in a
Foreign Country’s Court, 69 Va. L. Rev. 875, 893–895 (1983) (“[T]he Eng-
lish rule argument has three fatal ﬂaws. First, the so-called English rule,
decided in 1867, never was the English rule despite overstatements by
several American commentators and the Murphy Court. British com-
mentators remained uncertain for nearly a century about the extent to
which, if at all, their privilege protected against foreign incrimination . . . .
Second, the English courts had not decided a case involving incrimination
under the criminal laws of independent foreign sovereigns by the time our
Constitution was framed. The only English cases involving independent
sovereigns were decided more than sixty years later. Thus, even if the
ﬁfth amendment embodied the English common law at the time it was
framed, the privilege did not incorporate any rule concerning foreign in-
crimination. Finally, even if the English rule protected against foreign
incrimination, the Supreme Court in Zicarelli indicated that it had not