The US Constitution and Protection against Ex Post Facto Laws: An Unfounded Limitation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26422/RJA.2025.0602.catKeywords:
retroactivity, common law, ex post facto, retroactive lawsAbstract
The doctrinal itinerary of the ex post-facto clause in the U.S. Constitution reveals the fragility of certain dogmas accepted without scrutiny. This study inquires whether the limitation of that clause to the criminal sphere—established by the Supreme Court in Calder v. Bull (1798)—finds genuine foundation in the tradition of English law or whether, on the contrary, it derives from a later interpretation that became dogma through the conjunction of a judicial error and the endorsement of two eminent jurists.
To address this question, which after more than two centuries may seem heretical, the work turns to the sources of the Common Law. A close reading of the early texts reveals a broad and non-specialized use of the term ex post-facto, applied indiscriminately to civil and procedural matters. The philological analysis likewise confirms that the Latin expression bears no inherent penal meaning, and that its later restriction constitutes a doctrinal innovation foreign to that tradition. The debates of the Constitutional Convention and of the state conventions are also examined: within them, no technical notion of the term can be discerned. Some delegates invoked a supposed legal meaning; others, its common usage; yet from neither group’s words emerges a clearly defined and shared intent to confine the clause to criminal laws.
From all this it follows that the interpretation fixed in Calder v. Bull does not proceed from the tradition of English law nor from the original constitutional understanding. It is an incomplete judicial elaboration which—beyond its general harm—has distorted one of the most ancient principles of law: that which forbids legislation from reaching backward into the past. This distortion has also produced the need to erect an unwieldy theoretical edifice upon the distinction between criminal and civil laws, relegating the problem of retroactivity to a mere component of due process analysis and related doctrines, instead of allowing it to occupy the central place it rightfully deserves.
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