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Opinion of the Court
668 (1957); McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332 (1943). That power has been applied not only to improve the truth-finding process of the trial, see, e. g., Mesarosh v. United States, 352 U. S. 1, 9-14 (1956), but also to prevent parties from reaping benefit or incurring harm from violations of substantive or procedural rules (imposed by the Constitution or laws) governing matters apart from the trial itself, see, e. g., Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914). Thus, Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U. S. 250 (1988), makes clear that the supervisory power can be used to dismiss an indictment because of misconduct before the grand jury, at least where that misconduct amounts to a violation of one of those "few, clear rules which were carefully drafted and approved by this Court and by Congress to ensure the integrity of the grand jury's functions," United States v. Mechanik, 475 U. S. 66, 74 (1986) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment).6
We did not hold in Bank of Nova Scotia, however, that the courts' supervisory power could be used, not merely as a means of enforcing or vindicating legally compelled stand-6 Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure contains a number of such rules, providing, for example, that "no person other than the jurors may be present while the grand jury is deliberating or voting," Rule 6(d), and placing strict controls on disclosure of "matters occurring before the grand jury," Rule 6(e); see generally United States v. Sells Engineering, Inc., 463 U. S. 418 (1983). Additional standards of behavior for prosecutors (and others) are set forth in the United States Code. See 18 U. S. C. §§ 6002, 6003 (setting forth procedures for granting a witness immunity from prosecution); § 1623 (criminalizing false declarations before grand jury); § 2515 (prohibiting grand jury use of unlawfully intercepted wire or oral communications); § 1622 (criminalizing subornation of perjury). That some of the misconduct alleged in Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U. S. 250 (1988), was not specifically proscribed by Rule, statute, or the Constitution does not make the case stand for a judicially prescribable grand jury code, as the dissent suggests, see post, at 64-65. All of the allegations of violation were dismissed by the Court—without considering their validity in law—for failure to meet Nova Scotia's dismissal standard. See Bank of Nova Scotia, supra, at 261.
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