Offenses Against the United States .--There are no common-law offenses against the United States. Only those acts which Congress has forbidden, with penalties for disobedience of its command, are crimes. 7 Actions to recover penalties imposed by act of Congress generally but not invariably have been held not to be criminal prosecutions, 8 as is true also of deportation proceedings, 9 but contempt proceedings which were at one time not considered to be criminal prosecutions are no longer within that category. 10 To what degree Congress may make conduct engaged in outside the territorial limits of the United States a violation of federal criminal law is a matter not yet directly addressed by the Court. 11  

Footnotes

[Footnote 7] United States v. Hudson & Goodwin, 11 U.S. (7 Cr.) 32 (1812); United States v. Coolidge, 14 U.S. (1 Wheat.) 415 (1816); United States v. Britton, 108 U.S. 199, 206 (1883); United States v. Eaton, 144 U.S. 677, 687 (1892).

[Footnote 8] Oceanic Navigation Co. v. Stranaham, 214 U.S. 320 (1909); Hepner v. United States, 213 U.S. 103 (1909); United States v. Regan, 232 U.S. 37 (1914).

[Footnote 9] United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279, 289 (1904); Zakonaite v. Wolf, 226 U.S. 272 (1912).

[Footnote 10] Compare In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895), with Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194 (1968).

[Footnote 11] See United States v. Bowman, 260 U.S. 94 (1922) (treating question as a matter of statutory interpretation); National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws, Working Papers 69-76 (1970). Congress has recently asserted the authority by criminalizing various terrorist acts committed abroad against U.S. nationals. See, e.g., prohibitions against hostage taking and air piracy contained in Pub. L. No. 98-473, ch. XX; 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1203 and 49 U.S.C. app. Sec. Sec. 1471, 72; and prohibitions against killing or doing physical violence to a U.S. national abroad contained in Pub. L. No. 99-399, Sec. 1202(a), 100 Stat. 896 (1986); 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2331. Extraterritorial jurisdiction under the hostage taking and air piracy laws was upheld by an appeals court in United States v. Yunis, 924 F.2d 1086 (D.C. Cir. 1991).

Sixth Amendment Part 1 Table of Contents *
Sixth Amendment Text