Opinion ID: 710073
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lack Of Congressional Guidance

Text: 50 The difficulties faced by the courts and admittedly confronted by the INS are not entirely of their own making. As the dissenters in Jordan observed, and no court, to my knowledge, has ever disagreed, The uncertainties of this statute do not originate in contrariety of judicial opinion. Congress knowingly conceived it in confusion. Jordan, 341 U.S. at 233, 71 S.Ct. at 709 (Jackson, J., dissenting). Only a very few courts have looked to legislative history for some guidance on the meaning of the moral turpitude provision in the deportation acts, and all of these, like the dissenters in Jordan, have pointed to the comments of Rep. Sabath in the hearings of the House Committee on Immigration on what eventually became the Act of 1917:[Y]ou know that a crime involving moral turpitude has not been defined. No one can really say what is meant by saying a crime involving moral turpitude. Under some circumstances, larceny is considered a crime involving moral turpitude--that is, stealing. We have laws in some States under which picking out a chunk of coal on a railroad track is considered larceny or stealing. In some States it is considered a felony. Some States hold that every felony is a crime involving moral turpitude. In some places the stealing of a watermelon or a chicken is larceny. In some States the amount is not stated. Of course, if the larceny is of an article, or a thing which is less than $20 in value, it is a misdemeanor in some States, but in other States there is no distinction. 51 Hearings before House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization on H.R. 10384, 64th Cong., 1st Sess. 8 (comments of Rep. Sabath); see also Jordan, 341 U.S. at 233-34, 71 S.Ct. at 709-10 (Jackson, J., dissenting) (quoting this passage); Cabral, 15 F.3d at 195 (quoting these comments and recognizing Justice Jackson's quotation of them in support of the First Circuit Court of Appeals' conclusion that [t]he legislative history leaves no doubt ... that Congress left the term 'crime involving moral turpitude' to further administrative and judicial interpretation.). Justice Jackson observed that [d]espite this notice, Congress did not see fit to state what meaning it attributes to the phrase 'crime involving moral turpitude.'  Id. at 234, 71 S.Ct. at 709. 52