Petitions to watch | Conference of November 7

[Draggingtree]

Argument preview: Can plain language be vague?

By Lyle Denniston on Nov 4, 2014 at 11:53 am

At 10 a.m Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hold one hour of argument in Yates v. United States, testing the sweep — or the narrowness — of a federal law that seeks to protect evidence of crime from being destroyed. Arguing for a Florida fisherman who went to jail after a conviction under that law will be John L. Badalamenti, an assistant federal public defender in Tampa; Roman Martinez, an assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, will argue on behalf of the federal government. Each advocate will have thirty minutes of time.

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Red grouper

Background

It is an ancient principle of the criminal law that, to commit a crime, an individual must intend to do so. But it is also a long-standing rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating it. The trouble, in the field of federal laws making crimes, is that there are so many that even the Library of Congress did not have the staff to compile all of them, when asked to do so. What happens when one violates a law without