Ellingburg v. United States · ¶56

In turn, when Calder referred to criminal “punishment,” it simply meant whatever coercive sanction—or deprivation of life, liberty, or property—the law imposed as redress for committing those crimes. Blackstone understood punishment to include the traditional “coercive penalties” that the law imposed as redress for a public wrong. See 4 Blackstone 7–8. Dictionaries defined “punishment” broadly as “[a]ny infiction or pain imposed in vengeance of a crime,” S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (6th ed. 1785), or “any thing inficted for a crime,” Webster 241. The power of punishing an offender was the power to harm the offender in a way that was otherwise forbidden: “[N]o one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions”—“unless it be to do justice on an offender.” Locke 5 (emphasis added); see also id., at 6 (describing when “one man may lawfully do harm…

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