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ex post facto laws

Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court

Definitions from Case Law

From 71 U.S. 172 - Locke v. New Orleans · 1866Most cited · 41 citing opinions

Ex post facto laws embrace only such as impose or affect penalties or forfeitures; they do not include statutes having any other operation. The term ex post facto, literally construed, would apply to any act operating upon a previous fact, yet the restricted sense stated is the one in which it has always been held.

How often courts cite the case defining “ex post facto laws”

18601875190019251950197519909

Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “ex post facto laws” — 41 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.