Cite as: 529 U. S. 513 (2000)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
no reason to anticipate that K. M. would not report the assault within the outcry period, nor any cause to expect that corroborating evidence would not turn up sooner or later. Nor is the Clause's second purpose relevant here, for there is no indication that the Texas Legislature intended to single out this defendant or any class of defendants for vindictive or arbitrary treatment. Instead, the amendment of Article 38.07 simply brought the rules governing certain victim testimony in sexual offense prosecutions into conformity with Texas law governing witness testimony generally.
In holding the new Article 38.07 unconstitutional as applied to Carmell, the Court relies heavily on the fourth category of ex post facto statutes enumerated by Justice Chase in his opinion in Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 390 (1798): "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." Justice Chase's formulation was dictum, of course, because Calder involved a civil statute and the Court held that the statute was not ex post facto for that reason alone. Moreover, Justices Paterson and Iredell in their own seriatim opinions gave no hint that they considered rules of evidence to fall within the scope of the Clause. See id., at 395-397 (Paterson, J.); id., at 398-400 (Iredell, J.). Still, this Court has come to view Justice Chase's categorical enumeration as an authoritative gloss on the Ex Post Facto Clause's reach. Just a decade ago in Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U. S. 37 (1990), for instance, this Court reiterated that "the prohibition which may not be evaded is the one defined by the Calder categories." Id., at 46.
If those words are placed in the context of the full text of the Collins opinion, however, a strong case can be made that Collins pared the number of Calder categories down to three, eliminating altogether the fourth category on which the Court today so heavily relies. As long ago as 1925, in Beazell v. Ohio, 269 U. S. 167, the Court cataloged ex post
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