264
Opinion of the Court
usually—if not inevitably—also violates subsection (b), so that the fence may be punished by reference to that latter violation. In any event, nothing in subsection (c) purports to redefine the elements required by the text of subsections (a) and (b).
Carter's second argument is more substantial. He submits that, insofar as subsections (a) and (b) are similar to the common-law crimes of robbery and larceny, we must assume that subsections (a) and (b) require the same elements as their common-law predecessors, at least absent Congress' affirmative indication (whether in text or legislative history) of an intent to displace the common-law scheme. While we (and the Government) agree that the statutory crimes at issue here bear a close resemblance to the common-law crimes of robbery and larceny, see Brief for United States 29 (citing 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *229, *232); accord, post, at 278-279, that observation is beside the point. The canon on imputing common-law meaning applies only when Congress makes use of a statutory term with established meaning at common law, and Carter does not point to any such term in the text of the statute.
This limited scope of the canon on imputing common-law meaning has long been understood. In Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246 (1952), for example, we articulated the canon in this way:
"[W]here Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed. In such case, absence of contrary direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, not as a departure from them." Id., at 263 (emphasis added).
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