538
Opinion of the Court
facto.'" Collins, 497 U. S., at 42 (quoting Beazell, 269 U. S., at 169-170).
Collins then observed in a footnote: "The Beazell definition omits the reference by Justice Chase in Calder v. Bull, to alterations in the 'legal rules of evidence.' As cases subsequent to Calder make clear, this language was not intended to prohibit the application of new evidentiary rules in trials for crimes committed before the changes." 497 U. S., at 43, n. 3 (citations omitted). Collins then commented that "[t]he Beazell formulation is faithful to our best knowledge of the original understanding of the Ex Post Facto Clause." Id., at 43.
It seems most accurate to say that Collins is rather cryptic. While calling Calder's four categories the "exclusive definition" of ex post facto laws, it also calls Beazell's definition a "faithful" rendition of the "original understanding" of the Clause, even though that quotation omitted category four. And while Collins quotes a portion of Beazell omitting the fourth category, the immediately preceding paragraph in Beazell explains that the law at issue in that case did not change "[t]he quantum and kind of proof required to establish guilt," 269 U. S., at 170, a statement distinguishing, rather than overruling, Calder's fourth category.
If Collins had intended to resurrect a long forgotten original understanding of the Ex Post Facto Clause shorn of the fourth category, we think it strange that it would have done so in a footnote. Stranger still would be its reliance on a single case from 1925, which did not even implicate, let alone purport to overrule, the fourth category, and which did not even mention Fenwick's case. But this Court does not discard longstanding precedent in this manner. Further still, Collins itself expressly overruled two of our prior cases; if the Court that day were intent on overruling part of Calder as well, it surely would have said so directly, rather than act in such an ambiguous manner.
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