penal statutes
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 361 U.S. 87 - Commissioner v. Acker · 1959Most cited · 738 citing opinions
penal statutes are to be construed strictly, and one is not to be subject to a penalty unless the words of the statute plainly impose it.
How often courts cite the case defining “penal statutes”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “penal statutes” — 732 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.