280
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
that larceny is a lesser included offense of robbery, unless Congress has affirmatively indicated its design, in codifying the crimes of robbery and larceny, to displace their common-law meanings and relationship.
Far from signaling an intent to depart from the common law, the codification of § 2113's predecessor statute suggests that Congress intended to adhere to the traditional ranking of larceny as a lesser included offense of robbery. There is no indication at any point during the codification of the two crimes that Congress meant to install new conceptions of larceny and robbery severed from their common-law foundations.
Prior to 1934, federal law did not criminalize bank robbery or larceny; these crimes were punishable only under state law. Congress enacted the precursor to § 2113(a) in response to an outbreak of bank robberies committed by John Dillinger and others who evaded capture by state authorities by moving from State to State. See Jerome v. United States, 318 U. S. 101, 102 (1943) (1934 Act aimed at "interstate operations by gangsters against banks—activities with which local authorities were frequently unable to cope"). In bringing federal law into this area, Congress did not aim to reshape robbery by altering the common-law definition of that crime. On the contrary, Congress chose language that practically jumped out of Blackstone's Commentaries:
"Whoever, by force and violence, or by putting in fear, feloniously takes, or feloniously attempts to take, from the person or presence of another any property or money or any other thing of value belonging to, or in the care, custody, control, management, or possession of, any bank shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both." Act of May 18, 1934, ch. 304, § 2(a), 48 Stat. 783.
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