Cite as: 529 U. S. 513 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
Wooddeson's classification divided ex post facto laws into three general categories: those respecting the crimes themselves; those respecting the legal rules of evidence; and those affecting punishment (which he further subdivided into laws creating a punishment and those making an existing punishment more severe).11 See 2 R. Wooddeson, A Systematical View of the Laws of England 625-640 (1792) (Lecture 41) (hereinafter Wooddeson). Those three categories (the last of which was further subdivided) correlate precisely to Calder's four categories. Justice Chase also used language in describing the categories that corresponds directly to Wooddeson's phrasing.12 Finally, in four
that Wooddeson was William Blackstone's successor, 3 Dall., at 391 (Black-stone held the Vinerian chair at Oxford until 1766), and his treatise was repeatedly cited in the years following the ratification by lawyers appearing before this Court and by the Court itself. See, e. g., Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 562-563 (1819) (argument of Daniel Webster); id., at 668, 676 (Story, J.); Town of Pawlet v. Clark, 9 Cranch 292, 326, 329 (1815) (Story, J.); The Nereide, 9 Cranch 388, 449 (1815) (Story, J.); Cooper v. Telfair, 4 Dall. 14, 16-17 (1800) (arguments of Edward Tilghman, Jared Ingersoll, and Alexander Dallas); Hannum v. Spear, 2 Dall. 291 (Err. App. Pa. 1795); Glass v. Sloop Betsey, 3 Dall. 6, 8 (1794).
11 Specifically, in the former category Wooddeson included those laws that make "some innovation, or creat[e] some forfeiture or disability, not incurred in the ordinary course of law." 2 R. Wooddeson, A Systematical View of the Laws of England 638 (1792). In the latter category, he placed those laws that "imposed a sentence more severe than could have been awarded by the inferior courts." Id., at 639. As examples of the former category Wooddeson cited the bills passed by Parliament that banished Lord Clarendon in 1669 and Bishop Atterbury in 1723. Those punishments were considered "innovation[s] . . . not incurred in the ordinary course of law" because banishment, at those times, was simply not a form of penalty that could be imposed by the courts. Ibid. See 11 W. Holds-worth, A History of English Law 569 (1938); Craies, The Compulsion of Subjects to Leave the Realm, 6 L. Q. Rev. 388, 396 (1890).
12 See 2 Wooddeson 631 (referring to laws that "respec[t] the crime, determining those things to be treason, which by no prior law or adjudication could be or had been so declared"); id., at 633-634 (referring to laws "respecting . . . the rules of evidence [rectifying] a deficiency of
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