Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 758

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Unit: $U97

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

713

Breyer, J., dissenting

purposes.
378 U. S., at 55; 119 F. 3d 122, 129 (1997). And
whatever the disagreement about the relative weight to be
given each of those purposes or their historical origins, I
believe that these purposes argue in favor of the Second Cir-
cuit’s interpretation. Namely, an interpretation that ﬁnds
the Fifth Amendment privilege applicable where the threat
of a foreign prosecution is “real and substantial,” as it is
here. See United States of America v. McRae, 3 L. R. Ch.,
at 85–87 (distinguishing King of the Two Sicilies v. Willcox,
1 Sim. (N. S.) 301, 61 Eng. Rep. 116 (Ch. 1851), on this
ground); cf. Queen v. Boyes, 1 B. & S., at 330, 121 Eng. Rep.,
at 738.

A

This Court has often found, for example, that the privilege
recognizes the unseemliness, the insult to human dignity,
created when a person must convict himself out of his own
“At its core, the privilege reﬂects our ﬁerce ‘unwill-
mouth.
ingness to subject those suspected of crime to the cruel
[choice] of self-accusation, perjury or contempt.’ ” Pennsyl-
vania v. Muniz, 496 U. S. 582, 596 (1990) (quoting Doe v.
United States, 487 U. S. 201, 212 (1988)); South Dakota v.
Neville, 459 U. S. 553, 563 (1983). The privilege can reﬂect
this value, and help protect against this indignity, even if
other considerations produce only partial protection—pro-
tection that can be overcome by other needs. Cf. Mac-
Nair, Early Development of the Privilege Against Self-
Incrimination, 10 Oxford J. Legal Studies 66, 70 (1990) (early
ecclesiastical procedure recognized privilege until an accusa-
tion was made that person had committed an offense); ante,
at 692 (observing that the “protection of personal testimonial
inviolability” is not a “reliable guid[e]” to the “actual scope
of protection under the Clause”). And that value is no less
at stake where a foreign, but not a domestic, prosecution is
at issue.

This Court has also said that the privilege serves to pro-
tect personal privacy, by discouraging prosecution for crimes