Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
that would prosecute any crime under its laws that might thereby be revealed, id., at 87. The court's holding that the privilege could be invoked in such circumstances does not, however, support a general application of the privilege in any case in which a witness fears prosecution under foreign law by a party not before the court. Thus, Murphy went too far in saying that McRae overruled King of the Two Sici-lies.10 See Murphy, 378 U. S., at 71. What is of more fundamental importance, however, is that even if McRae had announced a new development in English law going to the heart of King of the Two Sicilies, it would have been irrelevant to Fifth Amendment interpretation. The presumed influence of English law on the intentions of the Framers hardly invests the Framers with clairvoyance, and subsequent English developments are not attributable to the Framers by some rule of renvoi. Cf. Brown, 161 U. S., at 600 (citing Cathcart v. Robinson, 5 Pet. 264, 280 (1831)). Since McRae neither stated nor implied any disagreement with Lord Cranworth's 1857 statement in King of the Two Sicilies that there was no clear prior authority on the question, the Murphy Court had no authority showing that Murdock rested on unsound historical assumptions contradicted by opinions of the English courts.
10 Murphy also cites Heriz v. Riera, 11 Sim. 318, 59 Eng. Rep. 896 (1840), as support for the claim that the English rule allowed invocation of the privilege based on fear of prosecution abroad. See 378 U. S., at 63. In that case two Spanish women brought suit in England alleging that the defendant had violated a contract that he entered into with their brother and to which they were entitled to the proceeds as his heirs. The contract provided that the plaintiffs' brother (and they as his heirs) were entitled to a share of the proceeds from a mercantile contract with the Spanish Government. The defendant responded that the contract was illegal under the laws of Spain and hence unenforceable and resisted discovery because his answers might incriminate him under the Spanish code. The court accepted the defendant's plea, though it is unclear whether the court ruled on the merits of the plaintiffs' claim or the self-incrimination issue. See Grant, Federalism and Self-Incrimination, 5 UCLA L. Rev. 1, 2 (1958).
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