Carter v. United States, 530 U.S. 255, 23 (2000)

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Cite as: 530 U. S. 255 (2000)

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

about the meaning of a statute." Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U. S. 224, 234 (1998) (quoting Trainmen v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 331 U. S. 519, 528-529 (1947)).2 Robbery, all agree, was an offense at common law, and this Court has consistently instructed that courts should ordinarily read federal criminal laws in accordance with their common-law origins, if Congress has not directed otherwise. See Neder v. United States, 527 U. S. 1, 21 (1999) ("[W]here Congress uses terms that have accumulated settled meaning under the common law, a court must infer, unless the statute otherwise dictates, that Congress means to incorporate the established meaning of these terms." (internal quotation marks and modifications omitted)); Evans v. United States, 504 U. S. 255, 259 (1992) ("It is a familiar 'maxim that a statutory term is generally presumed to have its common-law meaning.' ") (quoting Taylor v. United States, 495 U. S. 575, 592 (1990)); United States v. Turley, 352 U. S. 407, 411 (1957) ("We recognize that where a federal criminal statute uses a common-law term of established meaning without otherwise defining it, the general practice is to give that term its common-law meaning."). As we explained in Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246 (1952):

"[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

2 The majority says that courts may use a statutory title or heading only to "shed light on some ambiguous word or phrase," but not as a guide to a statute's overall meaning. See ante, at 267. Our cases have never before imposed such a wooden and arbitrary limitation, and for good reason: A statute's meaning can be elusive, and its title illuminating, even where a court cannot pinpoint a discrete word or phrase as the source of the ambiguity.

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