Task: sc_issuearea

What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.

Justice ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.
We consider in this case whether to overrule a longstanding interpretation of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. That Clause provides that no person may be "twice put in jeopardy" "for the same offence." Our double jeopardy case law is complex, but at its core, the Clause means that those acquitted or convicted of a particular "offence" cannot be tried a second time for the same "offence." But what does the Clause mean by an "offence"?
We have long held that a crime under one sovereign's laws is not "the same offence" as a crime under the laws of another sovereign. Under this "dual-sovereignty" doctrine, a State may prosecute a defendant under state law even if the Federal Government has prosecuted him for the same conduct under a federal statute.
Or the reverse may happen, as it did here. Terance Gamble, convicted by Alabama for possessing a firearm as a felon, now faces prosecution by the United States under its own felon-in-possession law. Attacking this second prosecution on double jeopardy grounds, Gamble asks us to overrule the dual-sovereignty doctrine. He contends that it departs from the founding-era understanding of the right enshrined by the Double Jeopardy Clause. But the historical evidence assembled by Gamble is feeble; pointing the other way are the Clause's text, other historical evidence, and 170 years of precedent. Today we affirm that precedent, and with it the decision below.
I
In November 2015, a local police officer in Mobile, Alabama, pulled Gamble over for a damaged headlight. Smelling marijuana, the officer searched Gamble's car, where he found a loaded 9-mm handgun. Since Gamble had been convicted of second-degree robbery, his possession of the handgun violated an Alabama law providing that no one convicted of "a crime of violence" "shall own a firearm or have one in his or her possession." Ala. Code § 13A-11-72(a) (2015) ; see § 13A-11-70(2) (defining "crime of violence" to include robbery). After Gamble pleaded guilty to this state offense, federal prosecutors indicted him for the same instance of possession under a federal law-one forbidding those convicted of "a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year... to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition." 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
Gamble moved to dismiss on one ground: The federal indictment was for "the same offence" as the one at issue in his state conviction and thus exposed him to double jeopardy. But because this Court has long held that two offenses "are not the'same offence' " for double jeopardy purposes if "prosecuted by different sovereigns," Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82, 92, 106 S.Ct. 433, 88 L.Ed.2d 387 (1985), the District Court denied Gamble's motion to dismiss. Gamble then pleaded guilty to the federal offense while preserving his right to challenge the denial of his motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds. But on appeal the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, citing the dual-sovereignty doctrine. 694 Fed. Appx. 750 (2017). We granted certiorari to determine whether to overturn that doctrine. 585 U.S. ----, 138 S.Ct. 2707, 201 L.Ed.2d 1095 (2018).
II
Gamble contends that the Double Jeopardy Clause must forbid successive prosecutions by different sovereigns because that is what the founding-era common law did. But before turning to that historical claim, see Part III infra, we review the Clause's text and some of the cases Gamble asks us to overturn.
A
We start with the text of the Fifth Amendment. Although the dual-sovereignty rule is often dubbed an "exception" to the double jeopardy right, it is not an exception at all. On the contrary, it follows from the text that defines that right in the first place. "[T]he language of the Clause... protects individuals from being twice put in jeopardy 'for the same offence,' not for the same conduct or actions," Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508, 529, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990), as Justice Scalia wrote in a soon-vindicated dissent, see United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (1993) (overruling Grady ). And the term " '[o]ffence' was commonly understood in 1791 to mean 'transgression,' that is, 'the Violation or Breaking of a Law.' " Grady, 495 U.S. at 529, 110 S.Ct. 2084 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (quoting Dictionarium Britannicum (Bailey ed. 1730)). See also 2 R. Burn & J. Burn, A New Law Dictionary 167 (1792) ("OFFENCE, is an act committed against law, or omitted where the law requires it"). As originally understood, then, an "offence" is defined by a law, and each law is defined by a sovereign. So where there are two sovereigns, there are two laws, and two "offences." See Grady, 495 U.S. at 529, 110 S.Ct. 2084 (Scalia, J., dissenting) ("If the same conduct violates two (or more) laws, then each offense may be separately prosecuted"); Moore v. Illinois, 14 How. 13, 17, 14 L.Ed. 306 (1852) ("The constitutional provision is not, that no person shall be subject, for the same act, to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; but for the same offence, the same violation of law, no person's life or limb shall be twice put in jeopardy" (emphasis added)).
Faced with this reading, Gamble falls back on an episode from the Double Jeopardy Clause's drafting history. The first Congress, working on an earlier draft that would have banned "'more than one trial or one punishment for the same offence,' " voted down a proposal to add " 'by any law of the United States.' " 1 Annals of Cong. 753 (1789). In rejecting this addition, Gamble surmises, Congress must have intended to bar successive prosecutions regardless of the sovereign bringing the charge.
Even if that inference were justified-something that the Government disputes-it would count for little. The private intent behind a drafter's rejection of one version of a text is shoddy evidence of the public meaning of an altogether different text. Cf. United States v. Craft, 535 U.S. 274, 287, 122 S.Ct. 1414, 152 L.Ed.2d 437 (2002) ("[F]ailed legislative proposals are a particularly dangerous ground on which to rest an interpretation of a prior statute" (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Besides, if we allowed conjectures about purpose to inform our reading of the text, the Government's conjecture would prevail. The Government notes that the Declaration of Independence denounced King George III for "protecting [British troops] by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States." ¶ 17. The Declaration was alluding to "the so-called Murderers' Act, passed by Parliament after the Boston Massacre," Amar, Sixth Amendment First Principles, 84 Geo. L. J. 641, 687, n. 181 (1996), a law that allowed British officials indicted for murder in America to be " 'tried in England, beyond the control of local juries.' " Ibid. (quoting J. Blum et al., The National Experience 95 (3d ed. 1973)). "During the late colonial period, Americans strongly objected to... [t]his circumvention of the judgment of the victimized community." Amar, 84 Geo. L. Rev., at 687, n. 181. Yet on Gamble's reading, the same Founders who quite literally revolted against the use of acquittals abroad to bar criminal prosecutions here would soon give us an Amendment allowing foreign acquittals to spare domestic criminals. We doubt it.
We see no reason to abandon the sovereign-specific reading of the phrase "same offence," from which the dual-sovereignty rule immediately follows.
B
Our cases reflect the same reading. A close look at them reveals how fidelity to the Double Jeopardy Clause's text does more than honor the formal difference between two distinct criminal codes. It honors the substantive differences between the interests that two sovereigns can have in punishing the same act.
The question of successive federal and state prosecutions arose in three antebellum cases implying and then spelling out the dual-sovereignty doctrine. The first, Fox v. Ohio, 5 How. 410, 12 L.Ed. 213 (1847), involved an Ohio prosecution for the passing of counterfeit coins. The defendant argued that since Congress can punish counterfeiting, the States must be barred from doing so, or else a person could face two trials for the same offense, contrary to the Fifth Amendment. We rejected the defendant's premise that under the Double Jeopardy Clause "offences falling within the competency of different authorities to restrain or punish them would not properly be subjected to the consequences which those authorities might ordain and affix to their perpetration." Id., at 435. Indeed, we observed, the nature of the crime or its effects on "public safety" might well "deman[d]" separate prosecutions. Ibid. Generalizing from this point, we declared in a second case that "the same act might, as to its character and tendencies, and the consequences it involved, constitute an offence against both the State and Federal governments, and might draw to its commission the penalties denounced by either, as appropriate to its character in reference to each." United States v. Marigold, 9 How. 560, 569, 13 L.Ed. 257 (1850).
A third antebellum case, Moore v. Illinois, 14 How. 13, 55 U.S. 13, 14 L.Ed. 306, expanded on this concern for the different interests of separate sovereigns, after tracing it to the text in the manner set forth above. Recalling that the Fifth Amendment prohibits double jeopardy not "for the same ac[t]" but "for the same offence," and that "[a]n offence, in its legal signification, means the transgression of a law," id., at 19, we drew the now-familiar inference: A single act "may be an offence or transgression of the laws of" two sovereigns, and hence punishable by both, id., at 20. Then we gave color to this abstract principle-and to the diverse interests it might vindicate-with an example. An assault on a United States marshal, we said, would offend against the Nation and a State: the first by "hindering" the "execution of legal process," and the second by "breach[ing]" the "peace of the State." Ibid. That duality of harm explains how "one act" could constitute "two offences, for each of which [the offender] is justly punishable." Ibid.
This principle comes into still sharper relief when we consider a prosecution in this country for crimes committed abroad. If, as Gamble suggests, only one sovereign may prosecute for a single act, no American court-state or federal-could prosecute conduct already tried in a foreign court. Imagine, for example, that a U.S. national has been murdered in another country. That country could rightfully seek to punish the killer for committing an act of violence within its territory. The foreign country's interest lies in protecting the peace in that territory rather than protecting the American specifically. But the United States looks at the same conduct and sees an act of violence against one of its nationals, a person under the particular protection of its laws. The murder of a U.S. national is an offense to the United States as much as it is to the country where the murder occurred and to which the victim is a stranger. That is why the killing of an American abroad is a federal offense that can be prosecuted in our courts, see 18 U.S.C. § 2332(a)(1), and why customary international law allows this exercise of jurisdiction.
There are other reasons not to offload all prosecutions for crimes involving Americans abroad. We may lack confidence in the competence or honesty of the other country's legal system. Less cynically, we may think that special protection for U.S. nationals serves key national interests related to security, trade, commerce, or scholarship. Such interests might also give us a stake in punishing crimes committed by U.S. nationals abroad-especially crimes that might do harm to our national security or foreign relations. See, e.g., § 2332a(b) (bombings). These examples reinforce the foundation laid in our antebellum cases: that a crime against two sovereigns constitutes two offenses because each sovereign has an interest to vindicate.
We cemented that foundation 70 years after the last of those antebellum cases, in a decision upholding a federal prosecution that followed one by a State. See United States v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377, 382, 43 S.Ct. 141, 67 L.Ed. 314 (1922) ("[A]n act denounced as a crime by both national and state sovereignties is an offense against the peace and dignity of both and may be punished by each"). And for decades more, we applied our precedent without qualm or quibble. See, e.g., Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 89 L.Ed. 1495 (1945) ; Jerome v. United States, 318 U.S. 101, 63 S.Ct. 483, 87 L.Ed. 640 (1943) ; Puerto Rico v. Shell Co. (P. R.), Ltd., 302 U.S. 253, 58 S.Ct. 167, 82 L.Ed. 235 (1937) ; Westfall v. United States, 274 U.S. 256, 47 S.Ct. 629, 71 L.Ed. 1036 (1927) ; Hebert v. Louisiana, 272 U.S. 312, 47 S.Ct. 103, 71 L.Ed. 270 (1926). When petitioners in 1959 asked us twice to reverse course, we twice refused, finding "[n]o consideration or persuasive reason not presented to the Court in the prior cases" for disturbing our "firmly established" doctrine. Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 195, 79 S.Ct. 666, 3 L.Ed.2d 729 ; see also Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121, 79 S.Ct. 676, 3 L.Ed.2d 684. And then we went on enforcing it, adding another six decades of cases to the doctrine's history. See, e.g., Puerto Ricov.Sánchez Valle, 579 U.S. ----, 136 S.Ct. 1863, 195 L.Ed.2d 179 (2016) ; Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82, 106 S.Ct. 433, 88 L.Ed.2d 387 (1985) ; United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 98 S.Ct. 1079, 55 L.Ed.2d 303 (1978) ; Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22, 98 S.Ct. 81, 54 L.Ed.2d 207 (1977) ( per curiam ).
C
We briefly address two objections to this analysis.
First, the dissents contend that our dual-sovereignty rule errs in treating the Federal and State Governments as two separate sovereigns when in fact sovereignty belongs to the people. See post, at 1990 (opinion of GINSBURG, J.); post, at 1999 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.). This argument is based on a non sequitur. Yes, our Constitution rests on the principle that the people are sovereign, but that does not mean that they have conferred all the attributes of sovereignty on a single government. Instead, the people, by adopting the Constitution, "'split the atom of sovereignty.' " Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 751, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 144 L.Ed.2d 636 (1999) (alteration omitted) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). As we explained last Term:
"When the original States declared their independence, they claimed the powers inherent in sovereignty.... The Constitution limited but did not abolish the sovereign powers of the States, which retained 'a residuary and inviolable sovereignty.' The Federalist No. 39, p. 245 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). Thus, both the Federal Government and the States wield sovereign powers, and that is why our system of government is said to be one of 'dual sovereignty.' Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 457 [111 S.Ct. 2395, 115 L.Ed.2d 410] (1991)." Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 584 U.S. ----, ----, 138 S.Ct. 1461, 1475, 200 L.Ed.2d 854 (2018).
It is true that the Republic is " 'ONE WHOLE,' " post, at 1990 (opinion of GINSBURG, J.) (quoting The Federalist No. 82, p. 493 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton)); accord, post, at 1999 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.). But there is a difference between the whole and a single part, and that difference underlies decisions as foundational to our legal system as McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819). There, in terms so directly relevant as to seem presciently tailored to answer this very objection, Chief Justice Marshall distinguished precisely between "the people of a State" and "[t]he people of all the States," id., at 428, 435 ; between the "sovereignty which the people of a single state possess" and the sovereign powers "conferred by the people of the United States on the government of the Union," id., at 429-430 ; and thus between "the action of a part" and "the action of the whole," id., at 435-436. In short, McCulloch's famous holding that a State may not tax the national bank rested on a recognition that the States and the Nation have different "interests" and "right[s]." Id., 431, 436. One strains to imagine a clearer statement of the premises of our dual-sovereignty rule, or a more authoritative source. The United States is a federal republic; it is not, contrary to Justice GORSUCH's suggestion, post, at 2001 - 2002, a unitary state like the United Kingdom.
Gamble and the dissents lodge a second objection to this line of reasoning. They suggest that because the division of federal and state power was meant to promote liberty, it cannot support a rule that exposes Gamble to a second sentence. See post, at 1990 - 1991 (opinion of GINSBURG, J.); post, at 1999 - 2000 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.). This argument fundamentally misunderstands the governmental structure established by our Constitution. Our federal system advances individual liberty in many ways. Among other things, it limits the powers of the Federal Government and protects certain basic liberties from infringement. But because the powers of the Federal Government and the States often overlap, allowing both to regulate often results in two layers of regulation. Taxation is an example that comes immediately to mind. It is also not at all uncommon for the Federal Government to permit activities that a State chooses to forbid or heavily restrict-for example, gambling and the sale of alcohol. And a State may choose to legalize an activity that federal law prohibits, such as the sale of marijuana. So while our system of federalism is fundamental to the protection of liberty, it does not always maximize individual liberty at the expense of other interests. And it is thus quite extraordinary to say that the venerable dual-sovereignty doctrine represents a " 'desecrat[ion]' " of federalism. Post, at 2000 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.).
III
Gamble claims that our precedent contradicts the common-law rights that the Double Jeopardy Clause was originally understood to engraft onto the Constitution-rights stemming from the "common-law pleas of auterfoits acquit [former acquittal] and auterfoits convict [former conviction]." Grady, 495 U.S. at 530, 110 S.Ct. 2084 (Scalia, J., dissenting). These pleas were treated as "reason[s] why the prisoner ought not to answer [an indictment] at all, nor put himself upon his trial for the crime alleged." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 335 (1773) (Blackstone). Gamble argues that those who ratified the Fifth Amendment understood these common-law principles (which the Amendment constitutionalized) to bar a domestic prosecution following one by a foreign nation. For support, he appeals to early English and American cases and treatises. We have highlighted one hurdle to Gamble's reading: the sovereign-specific original meaning of "offence." But the doctrine of stare decisis is another obstacle.
Stare decisis "promotes the evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process." Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 827, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720 (1991). Of course, it is also important to be right, especially on constitutional matters, where Congress cannot override our errors by ordinary legislation. But even in constitutional cases, a departure from precedent "demands special justification." Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S. 203, 212, 104 S.Ct. 2305, 81 L.Ed.2d 164 (1984). This means that something more than "ambiguous historical evidence" is required before we will "flatly overrule a number of major decisions of this Court." Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transp., 483 U.S. 468, 479, 107 S.Ct. 2941, 97 L.Ed.2d 389 (1987). And the strength of the case for adhering to such decisions grows in proportion to their "antiquity." Montejo v. Louisiana, 556 U.S. 778, 792, 129 S.Ct. 2079, 173 L.Ed.2d 955 (2009). Here, as noted, Gamble's historical arguments must overcome numerous "major decisions of this Court" spanning 170 years. In light of these factors, Gamble's historical evidence must, at a minimum, be better than middling.
And it is not. The English cases are a muddle. Treatises offer spotty support. And early state and federal cases are by turns equivocal and downright harmful to Gamble's position. All told, this evidence does not establish that those who ratified the Fifth Amendment took it to bar successive prosecutions under different sovereigns' laws-much less do so with enough force to break a chain of precedent linking dozens of cases over 170 years.
A
Gamble's core claim is that early English cases reflect an established common-law rule barring domestic prosecution following a prosecution for the same act under a different sovereign's laws. But from the very dawn of the common law in medieval England until the adoption of the Fifth Amendment in 1791, there is not one reported decision barring a prosecution based on a prior trial under foreign law. We repeat: Gamble has not cited and we have not found a single pre-Fifth Amendment case in which a foreign acquittal or conviction barred a second trial in a British or American court. Given this void, Gamble faces a considerable challenge in convincing us that the Fifth Amendment was originally understood to establish such a bar.
Attempting to show that such a bar was available, Gamble points to five early English decisions for which we have case reports. We will examine these in some detail, but we note at the outset that they play only a secondary role for Gamble.
The foundation of his argument is a decision for which we have no case report: the prosecution in England in 1677 of a man named Hutchinson. (We have a report of a decision denying Hutchinson bail but no report of his trial.) As told by Gamble, Hutchinson, having been tried and acquitted in a foreign court for a murder committed abroad, was accused of the same homicide in an English tribunal, but the English court held that the foreign prosecution barred retrial.
Everything for Gamble stems from this one unreported decision. To the extent that the cases he cites provide any support for his argument-and for the most part, they do not-those cases purport to take their cue from the Hutchinson episode; the same is true of the treatises on which Gamble relies.
So what evidence do we have about what actually happened to Hutchinson? The most direct evidence is a report of his application for bail before the Court of King's Bench. The report spans all of one sentence:
"On Habeas Corpus it appeared the Defendant was committed to Newgate on suspicion of Murder in Portugal, which by Mr. Attorny being a Fact out of the Kings Dominions, is not triable by Commission, upon 35 H. 8. Cap. 2. §. I. N. 2. but by a Constable and Marshal, and the Court refused to Bail him, & c." Rex v. Hutchinson, 3 Keb. 785, 84 Eng. Rep. 1011 (1677).
From this report, all that we can tell about the court's thinking is that it found no convincing reason to grant bail, as was typical in murder cases. The rest of the report concerns claims by an attorney. We are told that he contested the jurisdiction of the commission before which Hutchinson was to be tried, apparently a special commission that would have issued pursuant to a statute enacted under Henry VIII. The commission lacked jurisdiction, the attorney seemed to suggest, because the crime had occurred in Portugal and thus "out of the Kings Dominions." The attorney claimed that jurisdiction lay instead with "a Constable and Marshal"-an apparent reference to the High Court of Chivalry, which dealt with treason and murder committed abroad. But what, if anything, did the King's Bench make of the attorney's jurisdictional claims? And more to the point, what happened after bail was denied? The bail report does not say.
If Hutchinson did ultimately appear before the Court of Chivalry-and if that court accepted a plea of prior acquittal in Portugal-this would be paltry evidence of any common-law principle, which is what Gamble cites Hutchinson to establish. After all, the High Court of Chivalry was a civil-law court prohibited from proceeding under the common law (unlike every other English court of the time save Admiralty). 8 Ric. 2 ch. 5; see also Squibb 162; id., at xxv-xxvi ("The essential distinction between the Court of Chivalry and other courts is... that it administers justice in relation to those military matters which are not governed by the common law"). Nor would it be any surprise that we have no report of the proceeding; in fact, "[t]here is no report of a case in which a judge of the Court [of Chivalry] has set out the reasons for his decision earlier than the [20th] century." Id., at 162.
In the end, we have only two early accounts from judges of what finally became of Hutchinson, and both are indirect and shaky. First, they appear in the reports of cases decided in the Court of Chancery more than a half century after Hutchinson. Second, both judges cite only one source, and it is of lower authority than their own: namely, an account of Hutchinson given by an interested party (a defendant) in a previous, non -criminal case-an account on which the court in that case did not rely or even comment. Insofar as our two judges seem to add their own details to the Hutchinson saga, we are not told where they obtained this information or whether it reflects mere guesses as to how gaps in the story should be filled in, decades after the fact. Finally, the two judges' accounts are not entirely consistent. Still, they are the only early judicial glosses on Hutchinson that we have, so we will work with them.
The more extensive account appears in the case of Gage v. Bulkeley, Ridg. T. H. 263, 27 Eng. Rep. 824 (Ch. 1744), and what the court said there-far from supporting Gamble's argument-cuts against it. Gage involved a bill in chancery for an account of money deposited with a banker in Paris. The defendants pleaded, as a bar to this lawsuit, "a sentence" "given upon" the same demand in a French court. Ibid. In addressing this plea, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke first determined that foreign judgments are not binding in an English court of law. Here his reasoning was very similar to that found in our dual-sovereignty decisions. Because each judgment rests on the authority of a particular sovereign, the Chancellor thought, it cannot bind foreign courts, which operate by the power of a different sovereign. Id., at 263-264, 27 Eng. Rep., at 824.
Turning next to courts of equity, the Lord Chancellor saw no reason that the rule should be any different; there too, he thought, a foreign judgment is not binding. Id., at 273, 27 Eng. Rep., at 827. But he did allow that in equity a foreign judgment could serve as "evidence, which may affect the right of [a plaintiff] when the cause comes to be heard." Ibid.
Elaborating on why foreign judgments did not bind English courts, whether of law or equity, the Lord Chancellor explained why Hutchinson was "no proof" to the contrary. In the Chancellor's telling, Hutchinson was not indicted by the Court of King's Bench, which could have tried a murder committed in England, because that court had no jurisdiction over a homicide committed in Portugal. Gage, Ridge. T. H., at 271, 27 Eng. Rep., at 826-827. Instead, Hutchinson was (as the bail decision indicates) before that court on a writ of habeas corpus, and his case "was referred to the judges to know whether a commission should issue" under a statute similar to the one mentioned in the bail decision. Ibid., 27 Eng. Rep., at 827; see 33 Hen. 8 ch. 28 (1541-1542). "And," he explained, "the judges very rightly and mercifully thought not, because he had undergone one trial already." Gage, Ridg. T. H., at 271-272, 27 Eng. Rep., at 827 (emphasis added). This suggests that Hutchinson was spared retrial as a matter of discretion ("merc[y]")-which must be true if the Chancellor was right that foreign judgments were not binding. Indeed, at least one modern scholar agrees (on other grounds as well) that the result in Hutchinson may have been based on "expediency rather than law." M. Friedland, Double Jeopardy 362-363 (1969).
In the end, then, Gage is doubly damaging to Gamble. First, it squarely rejects the proposition that a litigant in an English court-even a civil litigant in equity-had a right to the benefit of a foreign judgment, a right that the Fifth Amendment might have codified. And second, Gage undermines Gamble's chief historical example, Hutchinson, by giving a contrary reading of that case-and doing so, no less, in one of the only two judicial accounts of Hutchinson that we have from before the Fifth Amendment.
The other account appears in Burrows v. Jemino, 2 Str. 733, 93 Eng. Rep. 815 (K. B. 1726). In Burrows, a party that was sued in England on a bill of exchange sought an injunction against this suit in the Court of Chancery, contending that the suit was barred by the judgment of a court in Italy. In explaining why he would grant the injunction, Lord Chancellor King cited Hutchinson, which he thought had involved an acquittal in Spanish court that was "allowed to be a good bar to any proceedings here." 2 Str. at 733, 93 Eng. Rep., at 815. This remark, showing that at least one English judge before the founding saw Hutchinson as Gamble does, provides a modicum of support for Gamble's argument. But that support softens just a few lines down in the report, where the Chancellor discusses the status of foreign judgments in courts of law in particular (as distinct from courts of equity like his own)-i.e., the courts that actually applied the common-law rules later codified by the Fifth Amendment. Here the Chancellor explained that while he personally would have accepted an Italian judgment as barring any suit at law, "other Judges might be of a different opinion." Ibid. As a whole, then, the Chancellor's comments in Burrows can hardly be cited to prove that the common law had made up its mind on this matter; just the opposite.
Gamble's other cases have even less force. The "most instructive" case, he claims, see Brief for Petitioner 13, is the 1775 case of King v. Roche, 1 Leach 134, 168 Eng. Rep. 169 (K.B.), but that is a curious choice since the Roche court does not so much as mention Hutchinson or even tacitly affirm its supposed holding. The defendant in Roche entered two pleas: prior acquittal abroad and not guilty of the charged crime. All that the Roche court held was that, as a procedural matter, it made no sense to charge the jury with both pleas at once, because a finding for Roche on the first (prior acquittal) would, if successful, bar consideration of the second (not guilty). Roche, 1 Leach, at 135, 168 Eng. Rep., at 169. But on our key question-whether a plea based on a foreign acquittal could be successful-the Roche court said absolutely nothing; it had no occasion to do so. Before the prosecution could reply to Roche's plea of prior acquittal, he withdrew it, opting for a full trial. The name Hutchinson does not appear even in the marginalia of the 1789 edition of Roche, which existed in 1791. See Captain Roche's Case, 1 Leach at 138-139.
Hutchinson is mentioned in connection with Roche only after the Fifth Amendment's ratification, and only in a compiler's annotation to the 1800 edition of the Roche case report. See 168 Eng. Rep., at 169, n. (a). That annotation in turn cites one case as support for its reading of Hutchinson : Beak v. Thyrwhit, 3

Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:

Answer: A