Ellingburg v. United States · ¶54

When the opinions in Calder spoke of “crimes,” they meant public wrongs. The prevailing definition of a “crime” around the time of Calder was “a violation of law to the injury of the public, a public offense.” N. Webster, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language 72 (1806) (Webster). Blackstone used the terms “crimes” and “public wrongs” interchangeably. See 4 Blackstone 1–5. His fourth volume covered “public wrongs, or crimes and misdemeanors.” Id., at 1.The “common-law conception of crime,” this Court has long recognized, was an “offense against the sovereignty of the government.” Heath v. Ala bama, 474 U. S. 82, 88 (1985). So Calder's limitation of the Ex Post Facto Clauses to crimes would have originally been understood to include all public wrongs.

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