Cite as: 524 U. S. 666 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
even though the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination is applicable to each. This has become especially true in our age of 'cooperative federalism,' where the Federal and State Governments are waging a united front against many types of criminal activity." 378 U. S., at 55-56 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
Since in this case there is no analog of Malloy, imposing the Fifth Amendment beyond the National Government, there is no premise in Murphy for appealing to "cooperative internationalism" by analogy to "cooperative federalism." 16
Any analogy must, instead, be to the pre-Murphy era when the States were not bound by the privilege. Then, testimony compelled in a federal proceeding was admissible in a state prosecution, despite the fact that shared values and similar criminal statutes of the state and national jurisdictions presumably furnished incentive for overreaching by the Government to facilitate criminal prosecutions in the States.
But even if Murphy were authority for considering "cooperative federalism" and "cooperative internationalism" as reasons supporting expansion of the scope of the privilege,
16 There is indeed nothing comparable to the Fifth Amendment privilege in any supranational prohibition against compelled self-incrimination derived from any source, the privilege being "at best an emerging principle of international law." See Amann, A Whipsaw Cuts Both Ways, 45 UCLA L. Rev. 1201, 1259 (1998) (hereinafter Amann).
In the course of discussing the Eleventh Circuit case raising the same issue as this one, Amann suggests nonetheless that the whipsaw rationale has particular salience on these facts because along with the United States, Lithuania and Israel are signatories to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Dec. 16, 1966, G. A. Res. 2200, which recognizes something akin to the privilege. See Amann 1233, n. 206. The significance of being bound by the Covenant, however, is limited by its provision that the privilege is derogable and accordingly may be infringed if public emergency necessitates. Id., at 1259, n. 354. In any event, Balsys has made no claim under the Covenant, and its current enforceability in the courts of the signatories is an issue that is not before us.
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