Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
States, 403 U. S. 713, 716 (1971) (per curiam) (Black, J., concurring) (emphasis deleted), was expressed early on in Chief Justice Marshall's opinion for the Court in the leading case of Barron ex rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243, 247 (1833): the Constitution's "limitations on power . . . are naturally, and, we think, necessarily applicable to the government created by the instrument," and not to "distinct [state] governments, framed by different persons and for different purposes."
To be sure, it would have been logically possible to decide (as in Barron) that the "distinct [state] governments . . . framed . . . for different purposes" were beyond the ambit of the Fifth Amendment, and at the same time to hold that the self-incrimination privilege, good against the National Government, was implicated by fear of prosecution in another jurisdiction. But after Barron and before the era of Fourteenth Amendment incorporation, that would have been an unlikely doctrinal combination, and no such improbable development occurred.
The precursors of today's case were those raising the question of the significance for the federal privilege of possible use of testimony in state prosecution. Only a handful of early cases even touched on the problem. In Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591 (1896), a witness raised the issue, claiming the privilege in a federal proceeding based on his fear of prosecution by a State, but we found that a statute under which immunity from federal prosecution had been conferred provided for immunity from state prosecution as well, obviating any need to reach the issue raised. Id., at 606-608. In Jack v. Kansas, 199 U. S. 372 (1905), a Fourteenth Amendment case, we affirmed a sentence for contempt imposed on a witness in a state proceeding who had received immunity from state prosecution but refused to answer questions based on a fear that they would subject him to federal prosecution. Although there was no reasonable fear of a prosecution by the National Government in that
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