522
Opinion of the Court
phrase "ex post facto" referred only to certain types of criminal laws. Justice Chase cataloged those types as follows:
"I will state what laws I consider ex post facto laws, within the words and the intent of the prohibition. 1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender." Id., at 390 (emphasis in original).9
It is the fourth category that is at issue in petitioner's case.
The common-law understanding explained by Justice Chase drew heavily upon the authoritative exposition of one of the great scholars of the common law, Richard Wooddeson. See id., at 391 (noting reliance on Wooddeson's treatise).10
9 Elsewhere in his opinion, Justice Chase described his taxonomy of ex post facto laws as follows: "Sometimes [ex post facto laws] respected the crime, by declaring acts to be treason, which were not treason, when committed; at other times, they violated the rules of evidence (to supply a deficiency of legal proof) by admitting one witness, when the existing law required two; by receiving evidence without oath; or the oath of the wife against the husband; or other testimony, which the courts of justice would not admit; at other times they inflicted punishments, where the party was not, by law, liable to any punishment; and in other cases, they inflicted greater punishment, than the law annexed to the offence." 3 Dall., at 389 (emphasis deleted).
10 Wooddeson was well known for his treatise on British common law, A Systematical View of the Laws of England, which collected various lectures he delivered as the Vinerian Professor and Fellow of Magdalen College at Oxford. Though not as well known today, Justice Chase noted
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