Opinion ID: 394034
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the ex post facto guarantee

Text: 11 Before determining whether the ex post facto clause applies to Warren's case, it is helpful briefly to consider the nature of the ex post facto guarantee. The Constitution prohibits both Congress and the various states from enacting ex post facto laws. 10 The scope of these provisions was clarified in 1798 when the Supreme Court first considered the reach of the ex post facto clauses in the much cited case of Calder v. Bull. 11 Our understanding of the basis of the prohibition against ex post facto laws has changed remarkably little since that time. 12 In Calder, Justice Chase, noting that the expression ex post facto had been in use long before the revolution, and had acquired an appropriate meaning, by legislators, lawyers and authors, 12 summarized what manner of laws he understood to be within the words and the intent of the prohibition: 13 13 1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender. 14 14 Having thus set forth his understanding of the scope of the ex post facto prohibition, 15 Justice Chase indicated why the clauses were included in the Constitution. The prohibition against the ex post facto laws, he wrote, 15 very probably arose from the knowledge, that the parliament of Great Britain claimed and exercised a power to pass such laws .... These acts were legislative judgments; and an exercise of judicial power.... With very few exceptions, the advocates of such laws were stimulated by ambition, or personal resentment and vindictive malice. To prevent such and similar acts of violence and injustice, I believe, the federal and state legislatures were prohibited from passing any ... ex post facto law. 16 16 Justices Paterson and Iredell, in their own separate opinions in Calder v. Bull, made clear their agreement with Justice Chase that the ex post facto provisions were motivated by a dreary history of legislative abuses. In Justice Paterson's words: The historic page abundantly evinces, that the power of passing such laws should be withheld from legislators; as it is a dangerous instrument in the hands of bold, unprincipled, aspiring and party men, and has been too often used to effect the most detestable purposes. 17 Justice Iredell enlarged at some length on the evils traceable to ex post facto enactments: 17 The history of every country in Europe will furnish flagrant instances of tyranny exercised under the pretext of penal dispensations. Rival factions, in their efforts to cross each other, have superseded all the forms, and suppressed all the sentiments of justice; while attainders, on the principle of retaliation and proscription, have marked all the vicissitudes of party triumph. The temptation to such abuses of power is unfortunately too alluring for human virtue; and therefore, the framers of the American constitutions have wisely denied to the respective legislatures, federal as well as state, the possession of the power itself: they shall not pass any ex post facto law; or, in other words, they shall not inflict a punishment for any act, which was innocent at the time it was committed; nor increase the degree of punishment previously denounced for any specific offence. 18 18 From the outset, then, the ex post facto clauses have been understood to have been principally aimed at curtailing legislative abuses. 19 A reading of Calder v. Bull as well as other early authority suggests, however, that the ex post facto provisions were meant to serve other ancillary functions as well. One such derivative purpose was neatly summarized by Justice Chase in Calder v. Bull itself: the very nature of our free republican governments, he wrote, implies that no man should be compelled to do what the laws do not require; nor to refrain from acts which the laws permit. 20 Justice Chase thus expressed a libertarian ideal appropriate for a pluralist society in which universal consensus will rarely exist as to the immorality of lawful acts. 21 Because an individual in such a society cannot be charged with knowledge that his lawful acts are immoral in the absence of an existing criminal enactment, the element of mens rea cannot be assumed to exist. 22 The legislature therefore is prohibited from retroactively imposing criminal penalties for the perpetration of lawful acts perhaps considered immoral only by some. In a society committed to liberty and not governed by orthodoxy the presumption must be that acts not specifically prohibited are permitted. Such a presumption guarantees that the citizenry may feel secure in acting in reliance on existing law and assures that fair notice will be given of any change. 19 The elements of fair notice and reasonable reliance are closely associated with another basis for the ex post facto proscriptions. Because an ex post facto law fails to provide fair warning, it cannot serve the core purpose of the criminal law, to regulate behavior by threatening unpleasant consequences should an individual commit a harmful act. Obviously, when a law is enacted after the fact, the time for threats has already passed. Quoting Blackstone, Justice Paterson seems to allude to this failure in Calder v. Bull. 23 An early Massachusetts case sets forth the objection more explicitly: 20 The reason why these laws are so universally condemned is, that they overlook the great object of all criminal law, which is, to hold up the fear and certainty of punishment as a counteracting motive, to the minds of persons tempted to crime, to prevent them from committing it. But a punishment prescribed after an act is done, cannot, of course, present any such motive. 24 21 Of course, the other goals of the modern criminal law rehabilitation of the criminal, retribution, incapacitation of the criminal so that, at least for a time, he can perpetrate no further harm, and the education and general deterrence of the public at large from committing similar acts can all be satisfied to some degree by ex post facto legislation. The constitutional ban on ex post facto laws, however, suggests that the framers considered the possibility of special deterrence a prerequisite to the imposition of specifically criminal penalties. The framers' position may have been based on the idea that, because special deterrence is so central to the criminal law, enactment of a criminal statute that cannot serve this function raises a strong presumption that the legislature's motives are impermissible. Since judicial inquiry into the motives of the legislature is difficult and unseemly, the framers may have considered it the better course to ban such legislation from the start. 22 In sum, there appear to be three broad bases for the constitutional prohibition of ex post facto legislation. First, and undoubtedly the most significant, is the invitation to legislative abuse ex post facto powers entail. Second is the frustration of reasonable reliance on existing laws and the consequent insecurity and infringement of liberty to which the citizenry would be subject were ex post facto legislation permitted. Finally, the ban on ex post facto legislation assures that the legislature can make recourse to the stigmatizing penalties of the criminal law only when its core purpose of deterrence could thereby possibly be served. 25