United States v. Robert Kaluza

How courts have described this case

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

• explaining that “[t]he rule of lenity requires ambiguous criminal laws to be interpreted in favor of the defendants subjected to them” (quoting United States v. Santos, 553 U.S. 507, 514 (2008))
• considering legislative history on a motion to dismiss to determine the meaning of a law when its plain text was ambiguous
• utilizing the ejusdem generis principle in determining that “[e]very captain, engineer, pilot, or other person employed on any steamboat or vessel” only applied to other persons conducting “marine” employment functions
• “Subject matter jurisdiction . . . can never be forfeited or waived.” (quotations and citations omitted)
• statutory language is ambiguous if it is “susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation” (quoting Carrieri v. Jobs.com Inc., 393 F.3d 508, 518-19 (5th Cir. 2004))
• “The rule ‘vindi- cates the fundamental principle that no citizen should be held accountable for a violation of a statute whose commands are uncertain, or subjected to pun- ishment that is not clearly prescribed.’”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).