Talk:Ex post facto law

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Contents 1 U.S. Constitution 2 Other types of retroactive law 3 Ex post facto and international crimes 4 Ex post facto and Guantanamo Bay 5 Ex post facto versus Ex post facto 6 Code of Conduct 7 Retrospective or retroactive? 8 Copyright law

[edit] U.S. Constitution

I put the reference to the US Constitution back, but with slightly different wording. It seemed to me to be a useful piece of information - and there's nothing wrong with that. I write as a non American, and I'm assuming that the information provided is correct. -- David Martland 08:42, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thank you, David. I didn't see the sin in referencing the U.S. Constitution on a page that was linked from an article on the subject. StinKerr 09:59, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Other types of retroactive law

What are the retroactive implications of something like Prohibition of Alcohol in the United States? When a law is removed does that mean that all criminal penalties are also immdediately removed, including penalties that are in the process of being carried out, such as a jail sentence?

This doesn't really fit into the category of ex post facto law, it's more a question of criminal procedure. Generally when a law is removed (as opposed to modified) all criminal convictions under the law will be overturned and no new prosecutions will occur (even if the act was illegal at the time it was committed). There are exceptions to this, though. When a law is modified, generally people will be prosecuted under the law as it stood at the time the offence was (allegedly) committed, otherwise this would violate ex post facto principles. Psychobabble

What about laws banning ex-felons from voting? I was just wondering why they don't qualify as a retroactive punishment, since they come into effect after one has already paid his or her debt to society. I've said this twice and been deleted. Could someone maybe clarify?Lebob 06:20, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If we're talking about Florida, it isn't ex post facto for 2 reasons. One, the laws have been on the books for over 50 years, it's just that no one was really enforcing them before Jeb. Two, even if Jeb had brought them in, they still aren't make an offence which is criminally punishing a past action. They are simply preventing you from in the future voting if you have a past conviction. It's exactly like if the state decides previously convicted pedofiles should be prevented from teaching small children. Taking away an aspect of someone's civil liberties isn't criminal punishment, and that's what double jeopardy is getting act. Psychobabble 09:16, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As to Florida specifically, you make a good point. If the laws have been applying for fifty years, they are not retroactive. However, the very basis of criminal punishment is the removal of civil liberties. If you haven't been convicted of a crime, you can keep life, liberty and property. If you're convicted, you can lose them in proportion to the crime you have committed. I don't see how the loss of civil liberty can be something separate from criminal punishment if that's all criminal punishment is.Lebob 04:47, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Criminal punishment is procedural not substantive. It involves (roughly) formal charges, trial by jury and judicial sentencing. The effect on one's civil liberties doesn't matter, it is the process that seperates criminal punishment from legislative sanction. Psychobabble 05:36, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

OK, I think I see why this doesn't apply...Lebob 06:10, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If the law forbidding felons' voting was passed AFTER the crime, then that's ex post facto law, but if it's already in effect at the time of the crime, I don't see why it would be ex post facto law then. Michael Hardy 01:10, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ex post facto and international crimes

Perhaps I should add a section on this on the page, but it's not strictly speaking relevant. When things like Nurenburg happen when people are punished for what was apparently legal at the time, they are tried for crimes against humanity which are classed as jus cogens - customary international law. These are crimes (originaly piracy, now genocide etc.) which are deemed to be universal regardless of domestic statutes and thus the infringing actions were illegal at the time the crime was commited. Thus the ex post facto principle is not, strictly speaking, violated.Psychobabble 10:42, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

"The Nuremberg Trials and other post-World War II laws that prosecuted former members of the Nazi party are often accused of being ex post facto laws." There is another problem with this sentence: it is ungrammatical - since it shortens the impossible sentence "The Nuremberg Trials are often accused of being ex post facto laws." That should be changed to something like "The rules under which the Nuremberg Trials were held and other ...". However, perhaps rules is not the correct word, and another word should be used, so I leave that to law specialists. User_talk:Pan_Gerwazy--pgp 07:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

A possible justification for the Nuremberg prosecutions of Nazi war criminals for blatant homicide and theft is that although acts of murder, medical experimentation upon non-consenting subjects, mistreatment of prisoners of war, kidnapping, theft, and torture may have received the permission or have been ordered by top leadership of the Third Reich, the crimes themselves were never legalized in general. No legislation ever formally abolished laws against murder, kidnapping, torture, or theft; no specific legislation authorized so horrific a crime as the Holocaust. German citizens were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced -- often to death -- for murder during the Third Reich. Nazi Germany also routinely executed captured partisans and 'traitors', demonstrating implied consent with capital punishment for severe violations of the law. Germany had a heritage of rule of law, and as much as was consistent with Nazi objectives (the compromises being obvious), the Third Reich usually found some semblance of judicial procedure appropriate in judging common crime.

All of the atrocities of the Third Reich were thus violations of German law even if a despot ordered them. That uppermost Nazi leadership attempted to keep those crimes hidden from the German public attests to some consciousness of the unconscionability of those crimes. Likewise, German officials were condemning the Allies for murderous crimes during the war while committing such crimes; by condemning Soviet atrocities against Germans or even the Anglo-American incendiary attacks on German cities, the same German leadership culpable in Nazi atrocities established the immorality of mass murder.

The question is not whether the acts tried after the war were criminal acts; the question is whether political leadership can excuse such acts, let alone command them with any reasonable expectation of compliance. Such crimes, to be sure, were violations of the pre-Nazi German legal heritage.

It is possible to recognize that such offenses as aggressive warfare in violation of treaties is without precedent as objects of prosecution. Such had been the norm of kings of medieval and primitive times; victors judge the losers and not themselves. But even if prosecutions for "crimes against peace" (including, as with Joachim von Ribbentrop for offering treaties of peace that Hitler intended to violate, or like Wilhelm Keitel, plotting those violations) or with "general conspiracy" to establish a totalitarian and murderous order (example: Wilhelm Frick) were almost without precedent, the horrors that followed any Nazi "crime against peace" themselves were monstrous crimes, and those who committed "crimes against peace" almost as a rule, including Ribbentrop, Keitel, and Frick, had culpability in the subsequent atrocities. --Paul from Michigan (talk) 13:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ex post facto and Guantanamo Bay

According to the Melbourne Herald Sun one of the charges filed against Australian citizen and Gitmo detainee David Hicks is in fact an ex post facto charge.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21170498-5005961,00.html

You could have used something a bit more serious as a reference, even The Australian (newspaper) is saying that the law was Ex Post Facto. Hicks and the others there could try appealing to the War Crimes Tribunal, claiming that:

• There is no such category as Illegal Combatant under international law.
• He was not aiding the enemy, since he was not a US citizen, and he committed no crime under Australian law. If he could be charged with aiding the enemy, then the entire defence industry in the USA could equally have been rounded up by the Taliban and charged with aiding the enemy.
• He was never in US terrritiory when conducting any activity which allows him to be charged under the military commisions act. Even if he visited the USA with the intent to plan an attack, he would have beeen breaking civilian criminal law, not military law.

Now that he has pleaded guilty, this is possibly his only chance, unless Labor win in the next election and pass an enabling act to release him (which would be unlikely). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 150.101.102.188 (talk) 03:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC).

Illegal combatants are the residue of the legal combatants and civilians of the Geneva Conventions. They are therefore war criminals. So unless you want to argue that Geneva should be ignored, it's hard to ignore illegal combatants. The other accusations essentially fail unless one ignores international law, so it was probably good not to make those arguments. 208.111.222.96 11:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ex post facto versus Ex post facto

202.161.20.198 22:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC) In the first paragraph, you say "An ex post facto law is..." You then go on to say, "Conversely, an ex post facto law is..." What's the difference? Should the second be subtly different?

The difference is in the outcome. I've changed the structure of the last sentence of the first paragraph to better emphasize the contrast in outcomes from the "amnesty" form of ex post facto law. --Hmvalois 07:24, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Code of Conduct

I've opened this discussion in the Talk:Nulla poena sine lege page. Briefly, I'm asking for your thoughts on how ex post facto does or does not apply to a very broadly stated code of conduct, or honor code. For example, the West Point Academy honor code is "A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do."

Please consider responding on the Talk:Nulla poena sine lege page instead of this page so that this discussion can be unified ...

--Hmvalois 07:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Retrospective or retroactive?

I would think retroactive would be the proper word, but the article uses retrospective. I'm not changing it because I'm not sure, and it seems to have been this way for quite a while. --BennyD (talk) 23:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright law

Hello,

Can it be added that most copyright laws are retroactive, either de jure or de facto, because the previous law was repealed? Yann (talk) 12:27, 2 January 2008 (UTC)