Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
administering the state law." 201 U. S., at 69. The state law, which addresses prosecutions brought by the State, suggested the rule that the Saline Bank Court applied to the case before it; the law provided that "no disclosure made by any party defendant to such suit in equity, and no books or papers exhibited by him in answer to the bill, or under the order of the Court, shall be used as evidence against him in any . . . prosecution under this law," quoted in 1 Pet., at 104. Saline Bank, then, may have turned on a reading of state statutory law. Cf. McNaughton, Self-Incrimination Under Foreign Law, 45 Va. L. Rev. 1299, 1305-1306 (1959) (suggesting that Saline Bank represents "an application not of the privilege against self-incrimination . . . but of the principle that equity will not aid a forfeiture"). But see Ballmann, supra, at 195 (Holmes, J.) (suggesting that Saline Bank is a Fifth Amendment case, though this view was soon repudiated by the Court in Hale, as just noted).
Where Saline Bank is laconic, Ballmann is equivocal. While Ballmann specifically argued only the danger of incriminating himself under state law as his basis for invoking the privilege in a federal proceeding, and we upheld his claim of privilege, our opinion indicates that we concluded that Ballmann might have had a fear of incrimination under federal law as well as under state law. While we did suggest, contrary to the Murdock rule, that Ballmann might have been able to invoke the privilege based on a fear of state prosecution, the opinion says only that "[o]ne way or the other [due to the risk of incrimination under federal or state law] we are of opinion that Ballmann could not be required to produce his cash book if he set up that it would tend to criminate him." 200 U. S., at 195-196. At its equivocal worst, Ballmann reigned for only two months. Hale v. Henkel explained that "the only danger to be considered is one arising within the same jurisdiction and under the same sovereignty," 201 U. S., at 69, and Ballmann and Saline
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