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?
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?
posted by Oliver W. Jones @ 9:09 PM
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