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1 1 (July 29, 2024)

handle is hein.crs/goveqen0001 and id is 1 raw text is: The Supreme Court's Narrow Construction of Federal Criminal Laws: 2023 Term July 29, 2024 Criminal law marks a boundary between conduct that society deems permissible and behavior that it deems worthy of punishment. Courts have expressed that those who cross the line may be subject to penalty and social disapproval. In addition to punishment, transgressors may face wide-ranging collateral consequences, among other things. Defendants charged with criminal offenses have mounted various legal challenges to the line drawn by criminal law itself One category of legal challenge centers on arguments related to where or how the boundary between lawful and unlawful conduct is set. For example, a defendant may argue that * the law is vague and fails to give fair notice as to what conduct is wrongful; * Congress may not have intended for the law to be applied to the defendant's particular conduct or circumstances; * enforcement of the law against the defendant would fail to reserve criminal punishment for those with a sufficiently culpable mental state; * the law clashes with countervailing constitutional values, such as federalism; and * the law is ambiguous, and under the rule of lenity, ambiguous criminal statutes are to be construed against the government and in favor of the defendant. In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions agreeing with defendants that have raised each of these arguments, narrowly construing federal criminal statutes in the process. A federal appellate judge described these rulings as nearly an annual event. A previous Sidebar surveyed the substantive reasons why the Court has limited the scope of criminal statutes, offering historical examples and discussing opinions from the Court's 2022 term. This Sidebar summarizes three cases from the 2023 Supreme Court term-Fischer v United States, Snyder v. United States, and Garland v Cargill-that seemingly continue this trend, providing some considerations for Congress with respect to the Court's interpretation of federal criminal laws. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11212 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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