CASE : Calder v Bull, 3 U.S 386 (1798)

INTRODUCTION :
This case proposes the term “ex post facto” which is a law that changes the legal consequences of the actions that existed before the law was enacted. In U.S, the states were prohibited from passing such laws by Clause 1, Art 1, Sec. 10 of their Constitution. The contention in this case was that such prohibition shall only be applied to criminal matters and not civil matters. This case in the later stages stated that a law that reduces the severity in a criminal act was retrospective and not an ex post facto law. The case also sheds the light on presumption of prospectivity and on this notion that natural law had precluded retrospective legislation. After this case the U.S Supreme Court …show more content…
Fuller would argue here that certain moral rules such as the obligation of the legislator and the Judge has to be clear and also the ban on the ex post facto laws can be derived from the nature of a society that is governed by rules. An act that is itself contrary to the first principles of the social impact cannot be considered a rightful exercise of the legislating authority. Fuller and Hart emphasized on regularity of procedure and judicial circumspection into structures of ideas that dominated the legal thinking in the 1950’s. The retroactive function in this case would not let it be a legal system at all considering the 8 principles of Fuller. It must be against all reason and justness for people to create a legislation with such powers. A statute hence must conform to the natural principles of justice even if it would mean setting aside the literal meaning it contained. As in the case it was argued that retroactive legislation must be limited to criminal matters and must not interfere with civil matters, Fuller had also asserted that Hart suggested that a retroactive criminal statute would have been least objectionable solution to the problem according to the Nazi Case law. In particular, Hart’s positivist conception of law does not appreciate how judges in such cases have to contend with a connection between the doctrinal level and the fundamental level. At the former, judges have to resolve issues of substantive law such as the issues of criminal law in the Grudge Informer Case. In this case where the court of appeal had come to the point that the wife was guilty of the deprivation of her husband’s liberty by denouncing him to the German Courts, even when he had been sentenced by the court for having violated a statute. According to Hart, the woman should have been punished under