Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-783_k53l.pdf
Page Number: 12.0

8 

VAN BUREN v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

with Van Buren: The phrase “is not entitled so to obtain” is 
best read to refer to information that a person is not entitled
to obtain by using a computer that he is authorized to ac-
cess.4 

2 
The Government’s primary counterargument is that Van
Buren’s reading renders the word “so” superfluous.  Recall 
the definition: “to access a computer with authorization and 
to use such access to obtain . . . information in the computer
that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain.”  §1030(e)(6)
(emphasis added).  According to the Government, “so” adds
nothing  to  the  sentence  if  it  refers  solely  to  the  earlier
stated manner of obtaining the information through use of
a  computer  one  has  accessed  with  authorization.    What 
matters on  Van Buren’s reading,  as the Government sees 
it, is simply that the person obtain information that he is
not entitled to obtain—and that point could be made even 
if “so” were deleted.  By contrast, the Government insists, 
“so” makes a valuable contribution if it incorporates all of 
the circumstances that might qualify a person’s right to ob-
tain information.  Because only its interpretation gives “so” 

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other property to have been so embezzled, stolen, [or] converted . . . re-
tains the same with intent to convert it to his use,” is subject to punish-
ment); §1708 (“[W]hoever steals, takes, or abstracts, or by fraud or de-
ception  obtains,  or  attempts  so  to  obtain,”  parcels  of  mail  is  subject  to
punishment). 

4 The dissent criticizes this interpretation as inconsistent with “basic 
principles of property law,” and in particular the “familiar rule that an 
entitlement  to  use  another  person’s  property  is  circumstance  specific.” 
Post, at 4–5 (opinion of THOMAS, J.).  But common-law principles “should
be imported into statutory text only when Congress employs a common-
law term”—not when Congress has outlined an offense “analogous to a 
common-law crime without using common-law terms.”  Carter v. United 
States, 530 U. S. 255, 265 (2000) (emphasis deleted).  Relying on the com-
mon law is particularly ill advised here because it was the failure of pre-
existing law to capture computer crime that helped spur Congress to en-
act the CFAA.  See supra, at 2.