Cite as: 518 U. S. 1 (1996)
Scalia, J., dissenting
probative evidence—or at least every one categorical enough to achieve its announced policy objective. In the case of some of these rules, such as the one excluding confessions that have not been properly "Mirandized," see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), the victim of the injustice is always the impersonal State or the faceless "public at large." For the rule proposed here, the victim is more likely to be some individual who is prevented from proving a valid claim—or (worse still) prevented from establishing a valid defense. The latter is particularly unpalatable for those who love justice, because it causes the courts of law not merely to let stand a wrong, but to become themselves the instruments of wrong.
In the past, this Court has well understood that the particular value the courts are distinctively charged with preserving—justice—is severely harmed by contravention of "the fundamental principle that ' "the public . . . has a right to every man's evidence." ' " Trammel v. United States, 445 U. S. 40, 50 (1980) (citation omitted). Testimonial privileges, it has said, "are not lightly created nor expansively construed, for they are in derogation of the search for truth." United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 710 (1974) (emphasis added). Adherence to that principle has caused us, in the Rule 501 cases we have considered to date, to reject new privileges, see University of Pennsylvania v. EEOC, 493 U. S. 182 (1990) (privilege against disclosure of academic peer review materials); United States v. Gillock, 445 U. S. 360 (1980) (privilege against disclosure of "legislative acts" by member of state legislature), and even to construe narrowly the scope of existing privileges, see, e. g., United States v. Zolin, 491 U. S. 554, 568-570 (1989) (permitting in camera review of documents alleged to come within crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege); Trammel, supra (holding that voluntary testimony by spouse is not covered by husband-wife privilege). The Court today ignores this traditional judicial preference for the truth, and ends up creat-
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