Cite as: 523 U. S. 155 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
criminal, see 1 Cong. Deb. 338 (1825), by assimilating state law where federal statutes did not provide for the "punishment" of an "offence." 4 Stat. 115. This law, with only a few changes, has become today's ACA. See Williams, supra, at 719-723 (describing history of ACA).
Two features of the Act indicate a congressional intent to confine the scope of the words "any enactment" more narrowly than (and hence extend the Act's reach beyond what) a literal reading might suggest. First, a literal interpretation of the words "any enactment" would leave federal criminal enclave law subject to gaps of the very kind the Act was designed to fill. The Act would be unable to assimilate even a highly specific state law aimed directly at a serious, narrowly defined evil, if the language of any federal statute, however broad and however clearly aimed at a different kind of harm, were to cover the defendant's act. Were there only a state, and no federal, law against murder, for example, a federal prohibition of assault could prevent the state statute from filling the obvious resulting gap.
At the same time, prior to its modern amendment the ACA's language more clearly set limits upon the scope of the word "any." The original version of the ACA said that assimilation of a relevant state law was proper when "any offence shall be committed . . . the punishment of which of-fence is not specially provided for by any law of the United States." 4 Stat. 115 (emphasis added); see also 30 Stat. 717 (later reenactment also using "offense"). The word "offense" avoided the purpose-thwarting interpretation of the Act discussed above, for it limited the relevant federal "enactment" to an enactment that punished offenses of the same kind as those punished by state law. Presumably, a federal assault statute would not have provided punishment for the "offense" that state murder law condemned. Congress changed the Act's language in 1909, removing the word "offense" and inserting the words "act or thing," 35 Stat. 1145, which later became the current "act or omission." But Con-
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