Court Opinion

ID: 9494511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:39:02.547707+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:26.594486
License: Public Domain

PLAGER, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.'
I cannot dispute that the weight of judicial opinion, though not the weight of either history or logic, currently argues for affirming the judgment of the trial court; the majority dutifully rounds up the usual judicial suspects. But there are times when the gap between law and justice is too stark to be ignored. This is one of them. It is simply unfair, and I believe it should be unconstitutional, in these circumstances to enact a statute that imposes a tax on a citizen based on an event that occurred before the tax was enacted. Retroactive legislation is inherently offensive to the natural law of decency, to the principles of the social compact set out in the Declaration of Independence, and to the underlying tenets of the Constitution. *1339And from the viewpoint of the taxpayer, it is no help to say that the basic tax was already in place, only the amount has increased; it is the amount that counts.
Yes, the majority has the law on its side, if following what other courts have said is the law. Perhaps understandably, courts have been unwilling to confront Congress in an area that has been viewed as peculiarly the province of the legislature: the raising of revenue for the Government’s purposes. In so doing, however, fundamental constitutional principles have had to be bent and distorted.
Plaintiff in this case cites a number of constitutional principles that could well dictate a result opposite to that reached. I need address only one. Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution, reciting the powers of and restrictions on Congress, provides that “No ... ex post facto Law shall be passed.” The courts tell us that this provision certainly applies to criminal laws-it would be unconstitutional to criminally punish someone more harshly for an act based on a law enacted after the act was committed. Yet the same courts tell us that it is not unconstitutional to tax away a citizen’s property based on a harsher law enacted after the event that triggered the tax.
Most citizens are basically law-abiding, and live and die with little if anything that could be called criminal on their records. But few citizens who live long enough to become economic contributors die without being subjected to an ex post facto tax assessment of one kind or another. That is wrong. The Constitution should work for the benefit of the law-abiding as well as those who run afoul of the law. Nothing in Article I, Section 9 says otherwise.
Congress is perfectly capable of raising all the revenue it needs without making its tax laws reach backward, taking property from citizens based on events that, at the time they occurred, were not subject to the new law. Congress has its role, but that role must be consonant with basic principles of law, which include fundamental notions of fairness and fair-dealing. The Constitutional prohibition against ex post facto laws rests upon those notions. The preservation of individual freedom requires the protection of property rights as well as liberty interests.
The trial court observed that an interpretation of the Constitution such as this suggests would make every retroactive tax law ipso facto an unconstitutional ex post facto law. That is not necessarily so. There may be compelling circumstances in which it is necessary to the essential working of government — for example, when national security concerns are involved — that a law, perhaps even a tax law, be made retroactive. This is not such a case. Here, Congress attempted to make the increased tax rate effective at a time when it would have properly applied to this decedent. The President, pursuant to his Constitutional authority, prevented that law from taking effect. Now Congress seeks to attain the same result by subsequent legislation made retroactive. Congress should not be permitted to disregard an exercise of the President’s Constitutional authority, and a citizen’s property rights should not be subjected to such high-handed governmental action when there is no compelling reason to justify it.
The Supreme Court often has said that retroactivity is not favored. If Congress fails to heed that injunction, and to treat its citizens fairly, consistent with Constitutional principles, it is the duty of the courts to say so. The origin of the notion that ex post facto civil legislation is not precluded by Article I, Section 9, is attributed to Calder v. Bull,1 a 1798 Supreme Court decision in which several of the Justices *1340opined on the subject. Neither history2 nor logic3 supports the proposition. Even those who attempt to find some reason for the distinction confess its shortcomings.4
It is time for the Justices of the Supreme Court to make their views clearly understood, and to assign Calder v. Bull and its progeny to the historic dustbin where they belong. See, e.g., Justice Thomas, concurring in Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 538-39, 118 S.Ct. 2131, 141 L.Ed.2d 451 (1998), and Justices O’Connor and Scalia (with whom Justice Thomas joined), concurring separately in United States v. Carlton, 512 U.S. 26, 35-42, 114 S.Ct. 2018, 129 L.Ed.2d 22 (1994).
I would reverse, and hold for the estate of the decedent.
Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge RADER. Senior Circuit Judge PLAGER dissents.

. 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 1 L.Ed. 648 (1798).

. See, e.g., Oliver P. Field, Ex Post Facto in the Constitution, 20 Mich. L.Rev. 315 (1921).

. See, e.g., Harold J. Krent, The Puzzling Boundary Between Criminal and Civil Retroactive Lawmaking, 84 Geo. L.J. 2143 (1996). For an exhaustive, and scathing, critique of current Supreme Court jurisprudence on the topic, see Laura Ricciardi & Michael B.W. Sinclair, Retroactive Civil Legislation, 27 U. Tol. L.Rev. 301 (1996).

. Krent, supra. See also Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 10-2 (2d ed.1988).