Trump v. Slaughter · ¶124

Some independent agencies even have de facto authority to create new crimes. By the 1990s, one scholar estimated that “over 300,000 federal regulations,” many of them adopted by independent agencies, “may be enforced criminally.” J. Coffee, Jr., Does “Unlawful” Mean “Criminal”?: Reflections on the Disappearing Tort/Crime Distinction in American Law, 71 B. U. L. Rev. 193, 216 (1991). More recent and exact totals are hard to come by—some say there may be simply too many regulatory crimes to count. See id., at 218.

slip opinion, revised 7/07/26
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