United States v. Arjona
Citations
- 120 U.S. 479
- 7 S. Ct. 628
- 30 L. Ed. 728
- 1887 U.S. LEXIS 1992
Syllabus
<p>It is within the constitutional power of Congress to enact laws to provide for the punishment of the offences of counterfeiting notes of a foreign bank or corporation,-or of having in possession a plate from which may be printed counterfeits of the notes óf a foreign bank or corporation; and it is not necessary to allege in an indictment for such an offence, or to show, that the notes of such a bank or corporation are notes of money or issue of a foreign Government, sovereign, or power; nor is it necessary to allege that the offence is “an offence against tlie Law of Nations.”</p> <p>The counterfeiting of foreign securities, whether, national or corporate, which have been put out under sanction of public authority at home — especially the counterfeiting of bank notes and bauk bills -‘-is hvl offence against the Law of Nations. ' .</p> <p>The United States being bound to protect a right secured by the Law of Nations to another nation or its people, Congress has the constitutional power to enact laws for that purpose; but this does not prevent a State from enacting laws to punish the same act when it may be an offence against the authority of the state as well as that'of the United States.</p>
How courts have described this case
Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.
- extending the longstanding obligation under the law of nations “of one nation to punish those who within its own jurisdiction counterfeit the money of another nation,\ to a duty to protect the \more recent custom among bankers of dealing in foreign securities”
- “[W]hat is law for one is, under the same circumstances, law for the other.”
- if “[a] statute defines the offense, . . . there is no more need of declaring in the statute that it is . . . an offense [against the law of nations] than there would be in any other criminal statute to declare that it was enacted to carry into execution any other particular power”
Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).
Judges: Waite
Read full opinion on CourtListenerSourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).
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