# United States v. Doe

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 28, 1984 · 465 U.S. 605

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9429514

## Case

- **Full name:** United States v. Doe
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 28, 1984
- **Citations:** 465 U.S. 605; 15 Fed. R. Serv. 1; 52 U.S.L.W. 4296; 57 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 1270; 104 S. Ct. 1237; 79 L. Ed. 2d 552; 1984 U.S. LEXIS 169
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by O'Connor
- **Judges:** Powell, Burger, White, Blackmun, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Marshall, Brennan, Stevens
- **Cited by:** 537 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Questioned by In Re Grand Jury Subpoena. In Re Grand Jury Subpoena. United States of America v. (Under Seal), 831 F.2d 290 (1987).
- Negative treatments: 3
- Distinguished by: 4
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9429514

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that “[although the contents of a document may not be privileged, the act of producing the document may be” because the holder of the document is compelled “to perform an act that may have testimonial aspects and an incriminating effect”; concluding that the district c…
- explaining that, in the context of subpoenas for documents from sole proprietorship companies, the Government was not “foreclosed from ... producing evidence that possession, existence, and authentication [of the subpoenaed documents] were a ‘foregone conclusion’ ”
- holding that the defendant could not be compelled to produce documents without a statutory grant of use immunity despite the Government’s repeated oral promises to the court that it would not use the act of production against the defendant
- holding that the Fifth Amendment does not protect the contents of an individual's business records in his own possession
- holding that the compelled production of a sole proprietorship’s records would violate the Fifth Amendment

## Opinion text

*618 Justice O’Connor,
concurring.
I concur in both the result and reasoning of Justice Powell’s opinion for the Court. I write separately, however, just to make explicit what is implicit in the analysis of that opinion: that the Fifth Amendment provides absolutely no protection for the contents of private papers of any kind. The notion that the Fifth Amendment protects the privacy of papers originated in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 (1886), but our decision in Fisher v. United States, 425 U. S. 391 (1976), sounded the death knell for Boyd. “Several of Boyd’s express or implicit declarations [had] not stood the test of time,” 425 U. S., at 407 , and its privacy of papers concept “ha[d] long been a rule searching for a rationale . . . .” Id., at 409 . Today’s decision puts a long overdue end to that fruitless search.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9429514. Public record. Not legal advice.