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Page Number: 47

10 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

duct  that  presents  a  serious  potential  risk  of  physical
injury to another.”  The use of these two different terms in 
§924(e)  indicates  that  “conduct”  refers  to  things  done 
during  the  commission  of  an  offense  that  are  not  part  of 
the  elements  needed  for  conviction.    Because  those  extra 
actions  vary  from  case  to  case,  it  is  natural  to  interpret
“conduct”  to  mean  real-world  conduct,  not  the  conduct 
involved in some Platonic ideal of the offense. 

Second,  as the  Court  points out, standards like the one
in  the  residual  clause  almost  always  appear  in  laws  that 
call  for  application  by  a  trier  of  fact.  This  strongly  sug­
gests  that  the  residual  clause  calls  for  the  same  sort  of 
application.

Third, if the Court is correct that the residual clause is 
nearly  incomprehensible  when  interpreted  as  applying  to
an  “idealized  ordinary  case  of  the  crime,”  then  that  is 
telling  evidence  that  this  is  not  what  Congress  intended. 
When another interpretation is ready at hand, why should
we assume that Congress gave the clause a meaning that 
is impossible—or even, exceedingly difficult—to apply? 

D 
Not only does the “real-world conduct” interpretation fit
the  terms  of  the  residual  clause,  but  the  reasons  that 
persuaded  the  Court  to  adopt  the  categorical  approach  in 
Taylor  either  do  not  apply  or  have  much  less  force  in
residual clause cases.
  In  Taylor,  the  question  before  the  Court  concerned  the
meaning  of  “burglary,”  one  of  ACCA’s  enumerated  of- 
fenses.    The  Court  gave  three  reasons  for  holding  that  a 
judge making an ACCA determination should generally look 
only at the elements of the offense of conviction and not to
other things that the defendant did during the commission 
of the offense.  First, the Court thought that ACCA’s use of 
the term “convictions” pointed to the categorical approach.
The Court wrote: “Section 924(e)(1) refers to ‘a person who