268
Opinion of the Court
The Sixth Circuit, in this case, added two glosses to the made-specific standard of fair warning. In its view, a generally phrased constitutional right has been made specific within the meaning of Screws only if a prior decision of this Court has declared the right, and then only when this Court has applied its ruling in a case with facts "fundamentally similar" to the case being prosecuted. 73 F. 3d, at 1393. None of the considerations advanced in this case, however, persuade us that either a decision of this Court or the extreme level of factual specificity envisioned by the Court of Appeals is necessary in every instance to give fair warning.
First, contrary to the Court of Appeals, see ibid., we think it unsound to read Screws as reasoning that only this Court's decisions could provide the required warning. Although the Screws plurality gave two examples involving decisions of the Court, their opinion referred in general terms to rights made specific by "decisions interpreting" the Constitution, see 325 U. S., at 104 (plurality opinion), and no subsequent case has held that the universe of relevant interpretive decisions is confined to our opinions. While United States v. Kozminski, 487 U. S. 931 (1988), a case under § 241 for violatlaw crime"; it narrowly construed a broadly worded Act of Congress, and the policies favoring strict construction of criminal statutes oblige us to carry out congressional intent as far as the Constitution will admit, see Kozminski, supra, at 939; Huddleston v. United States, 415 U. S. 814, 831 (1974); United States v. Morris, 14 Pet. 464, 475 (1840). Nor is § 242's pedigree as an Act of Congress tainted by its birth at the hands of codifiers who arguably made substantive changes in the pre-existing law, see n. 1, supra, as the Sixth Circuit concluded from the statutory history, 73 F. 3d, at 1384-1387. The legislative intent of Congress is to be derived from the language and structure of the statute itself, if possible, not from the assertions of codifiers directly at odds with clear statutory language. See, e. g., United States v. Wells, 519 U. S. 482, 496-497 (1997). Further, the Sixth Circuit's conclusion that Congress never intended § 242 to extend to "newly-created constitutional rights," 73 F. 3d, at 1387, is belied by the fact that Congress has increased the penalties for the section's violation several times since Screws was decided, without contracting its substantive scope, see n. 1, supra.
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