Does "Any Court" Include A Japanese Court?

Small v. United States

Even after reading the dissent, I really can't understand why this wasn't a unanimous opinion. Small was convicted of smuggling firearms into Japan and sentence to 5 years. After arriving home in the USA he bought a gun, and is being tried under a statute that makes it illegal to own a gun if you have ever been convicted and sentenced to more than 1 year in "any court."

The majority opinion explains how if "any" X were to be interpreted as including extraterritorial X there would be significant ramifications for many other laws, which the legislature clearly never intended. The dissent argues that it is plain and clear, any means any, means any. See the previous case (Pasquantino v. United States), which was released on the same day, for more discussion of the extraterritorial limits of the law. Considering how reticent the justices were to recognize Canada's right to tax people coming over its boarders in the previously mentioned case, I would have expected this one to be simple.

The reason we need to base the interpretation of the laws on plain and simple definitions is (at least in my view) because at some point we expect people to follow them, and if they were written in Latin or hieroglyphs that would be an unreasonable expectation. Similarly, if we were to interpret a word to mean something substantially different than what it is, we could not expect people to understand and follow the law. So what would "any court" mean to you? I would certainly expect it to mean any U.S. court, and by this ruling, it would seem, I would have a leg to stand on.

Incidentally, this linguistic interpretation is part of the whole 'Living Constitution' debate, and the concept of "evolving standards of decency," both big constitutional issues. What does "decency" mean? Is it subjective or objective? Do "arms" mean assault weapons, considering when the Constitution was written they meant swords and maybe single shot rifles?

Revenue Rule and Enforcing an Extraterritorial Penal Code

Pasquantino v. United States

In this case two people are charged with wire fraud for using interstate wires to effect a "scheme or artifice" to defraud. The real question here is whether enforcing the U.S. code would violate the common law rule against recognizing the revenue laws of Canada.

The Court held that whereas the revenue rule was derived from the concept that the laws of another state cannot be enforced by another, this prosecution does not cross that line for a few reasons. First, it must be presumed that Congress legislates with a recognition of the law of the land, and in 1952 (when the wire fraud law was written) there was no case that indicated that the law cannot recognize extraterritorial taxes in its own domestic functions. Furthermore, there was nothing in the spirit of the common law to indicate that it should be read so expansively.

What is interesting is that the Court found that this prosecution only required the law to recognize the extraterritorial taxes to show that there was intent to defraud, and that the defendants' "offense was complete the moment they executed the scheme inside the United States." what's more, it seems that, by the wording of the statue, the fact that Canada was in fact deprived of taxes due it, is relatively inconsequential as to this prosecution. What really matters is that the defendants intended to cause the loss. Thus this case is only applying domestic law, and one that is meant to prohibit sufficiently deplorable activity.

The dissent focuses on the fact that this judgment requires a finding of fact that relies on Canadian entitlement to the taxes as a prerequisite for the application of the statute, in that these taxes had to meet the requirement of being "money or property" by the statute, and money or property "in the victim's hands" as interpreted by the Court (meaning it was due Canada). There is also some discussion of the fact that the sentence is based largely on the amount defrauded, which further blurs the line, but insofar as this decision is just about finding guilt or not, this seems somewhat misplaced.

Jury of Your Peers

Ok, once in a while Ill sneak in something like this:

I sat in on a trial today. Two men are accused of having a shootout in a parking lot, and killing an innocent bystander. Both defendants are black. A woman that I can only assume is the mother of one of the accused was standing outside of the courtroom and as the jury pool entered, a more-than-predominately white group. She commented to someone "isn't' it supposed to be a jury of his peers?"

As a matter of fact it is not, but everyone seems to believe that those words are in the constitution somewhere. I can't even find it in the U.S Code. This isn't the only misconception about the law, the presumption of innocence is not to be found in either the Constitution or the U.S Code (as far as I can find). It is spelled out in Coffin v. United States (1895) and is thus common law.

If this seems strange, think about it this way: In this trial there are two defendants, both black, both gang members, both with corn-rows. Considering these, along with other factors, such as economic status, what do we consider to be peers? Should the jury pool be limited to African Americans? To gang members? To those with corn-rows? To only those that fit all of these characteristics? Granted, the other side of the argument, allowing bilionaire Enron C.E.Os determine the fate of the lower class is equally disturbing. Regardless, for better or worse, neither of these two pillars of our justice system are in the Constitution. The Court, however, has taken steps to limit a lawyer's ability to stack the race of the jury, by outlawing the use of peremptory challenges for the purpose of removing all potential jurors of a given race. And it looks like that ruling is about to be upheld.

Misrepresentation Must Be A 'Cause In Fact'

Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc., ET AL. v. Broudo ET AL.
Supreme Court Opinion, 9th Circuit Court Opinion

Ah, an easier one, a unanimous court. This is about some people that bought Dura Pharmaceutical stock at an over valued price because of less-than-accurate press releases by the company.

The 9th circuit overturned the lower court's decision because the lower court did not consider the misrepresentations collectively, and thus misinterpreted "whether the total of [the accusations] even though individually lacking, are sufficient to create a strong inference that defendants acted with deliberate or conscious recklessness." This court reasoned that if the price of the stock was artificially inflated that the plaintiffs "were harmed when they paid more for the stock than it was worth," and that "it is at that time that damages are to be measured."

The Supreme Court recognized that this statement of the law is different than that in other jurisdictions, and thus decided to reconcile it. The Court reasoned that at "the moment the transaction takes place, the plaintiff has suffered no loss; the inflated purchase payment is offset by ownership of a share that at that instant possesses equivalent value." Furthermore, since stocks are bought 'with an eye to the future,' the most that can be said is "that the highest purchase price will sometimes play a role in bringing about future loss." Therefore, the misrepresentation cannot be considered to be a proven cause in fact.

The Court decided that the 9th circuit's logic cannot be reconciled with other common law. I have been studying this Restatement (Second) of Torts in a class, so its cool to see it applied today. Causation in fact is a big deal in this area, and I can only say that the debate between these two opinions seems to have come out on the right side, since the fact that those people paying an inflated price may be ripped off doesn't mean that they will be ripped off.