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SWIDLER & BERLIN v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

handwritten notes. One of the ﬁrst entries in the notes is
the word “Privileged.” Nine days later, Foster committed
suicide.

In December 1995, a federal grand jury, at the request of
the Independent Counsel, issued subpoenas to petitioners
Hamilton and Swidler & Berlin for, inter alia, Hamilton’s
handwritten notes of his meeting with Foster. Petitioners
ﬁled a motion to quash, arguing that the notes were protected
by the attorney-client privilege and by the work-product
privilege. The District Court, after examining the notes
in camera, concluded they were protected from disclosure
by both doctrines and denied enforcement of the subpoenas.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
reversed.
In re Sealed Case, 124 F. 3d 230 (1997). While
recognizing that most courts assume the privilege survives
death, the Court of Appeals noted that holdings actually
manifesting the posthumous force of the privilege are rare.
Instead, most judicial references to the privilege’s posthu-
mous application occur in the context of a well-recognized
exception allowing disclosure for disputes among the client’s
It further noted that most commen-
heirs.
tators support some measure of posthumous curtailment of
the privilege.
Id., at 232. The Court of Appeals thought
that the risk of posthumous revelation, when conﬁned to the
criminal context, would have little to no chilling effect on
client communication, but that the costs of protecting com-
munications after death were high.
It therefore concluded
that the privilege was not absolute in such circumstances,
and that instead, a balancing test should apply.
Id., at 233–
234.
It thus held that there is a posthumous exception to
the privilege for communications whose relative importance
Id., at 235.
to particular criminal litigation is substantial.
While acknowledging that uncertain privileges are disfa-
vored, Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U. S. 1, 17–18 (1996), the Court
of Appeals determined that the uncertainty introduced by
its balancing test was insigniﬁcant in light of existing excep-

Id., at 231–232.