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Supreme Court· 5/3/1948

United States v. Evans

Citations

  • 333 U.S. 483
  • 68 S. Ct. 634
  • 92 L. Ed. 2d 823
  • 1948 U.S. LEXIS 2409

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

  • observing that manipulating a statute to fill in a missing penalty provision \is a task outside the bounds of judicial interpretation\
  • holding that given Congress’ “repeated failure to clarify [a penal statute], after experience had shown the need,” there can be no “direction to the courts to do what Congress itself either refused or failed on notice to do upon so many occasions and importunities”
  • rejecting construction urged by government which would require court to imply a penalty not specifically delineated in a statute as usurpation of legislative function
  • declining to “decide wholesale” all potential problems stemming from unclear statutory provision because “to resolve it broadside now for all those cases the section may cover, on this indirect presentation, would be to proceed in an essentially legislative manner____”
  • clear intent to punish proscribed conduct does not authorize court to fix a penalty where the statute is too uncertain
  • clear intent to punish proscribed conduct does not authorize court to fix a penalty where the statute is too uncertain

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Rutledge

Read full opinion on CourtListener

Cited by

139 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

7 cases in this archive are cited by this case.

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