458
Opinion of the Court
Carolina court's construction of the statute violated this principle because it was so clearly at odds with the statute's plain language and had no support in prior South Carolina decisions. 378 U. S., at 356.
Relying largely upon Bouie, petitioner argues that the Tennessee court erred in rejecting his claim that the retroactive application of its decision to his case violates due process. Petitioner contends that the Ex Post Facto Clause would prohibit the retroactive application of a decision abolishing the year and a day rule if accomplished by the Tennessee Legislature. He claims that the purposes behind the Clause are so fundamental that due process should prevent the Supreme Court of Tennessee from accomplishing the same result by judicial decree. Brief for Petitioner 8-18. In support of this claim, petitioner takes Bouie to stand for the proposition that "[i]n evaluating whether the retroactive application of a judicial decree violates Due Process, a critical question is whether the Constitution would prohibit the same result attained by the exercise of the state's legislative power." Brief for Petitioner 12.
To the extent petitioner argues that the Due Process Clause incorporates the specific prohibitions of the Ex Post Facto Clause as identified in Calder, petitioner misreads Bouie. To be sure, our opinion in Bouie does contain some expansive language that is suggestive of the broad interpretation for which petitioner argues. Most prominent is our statement that "[i]f a state legislature is barred by the Ex Post Facto Clause from passing . . . a law, it must follow that a State Supreme Court is barred by the Due Process Clause from achieving precisely the same result by judicial construction." 378 U. S., at 353-354; see also id., at 353 ("[A]n unforeseeable judicial enlargement of a criminal statute, applied retroactively, operates precisely like an ex post facto law"); id., at 362 ("The Due Process Clause compels the same result" as would the constitutional proscription against ex post facto laws "where the State has sought to achieve
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