Don't you think the Supreme Court in 1798-- less than 10 years after the Constitution was ratified and when the Supreme Court included at least one Justice who had signed the Constitution--might have had some idea of what the Constitution meant?
The Congress, taking advantage of this pronouncement, passes ex post facto tax laws claiming that they are “regulatory” or “administrative” in nature and not criminal; however, when violations of these same laws are tried they are tried in CRIMINAL court. Since something cannot be both true and false simultaneously the question must be asked: are tax-laws part of criminal-law? If they are then Congress’s retroactive laws MUST be considered invalid by the Supreme Court’s ruling; if they are not then ALL criminal tax-law convictions MUST be null and void.
Most tax laws are not criminal. There are a few criminal provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. (I used to defend people against such charges.) All of the criminal provisions of the Internal Revenue Code require proof that the defendant not only violated the tax law but also that the defendant knew that was he was doing was illegal (see, for example, Cheek v. United States), so no, no one can be criminally prosecuted for violating a tax law change that was passed after he did the act he was prosecuted for.
This dilemma does not exist at all if, when the Constitution says “no ex post facto law,” it really DOES mean NO such law.
It doesn't say "no law that is retroactive in effect"; it says "no ex post facto law." "Ex post facto law" was a technical term which had a specific meaning under British common law, and the authors of the Constitution used that technical term because they wanted to adopt that well-known meaning. (Much as they used the words "Natural Born Citizen" because they wanted to adopt the meaning of the British common law term "natural born subject.")
>Don’t you think the Supreme Court in 1798— less than 10 years after the Constitution was ratified and when the Supreme Court included at least one Justice who had signed the Constitution—might have had some idea of what the Constitution meant?
Irrelevant.
Either the Constitution means what it says OR it does not; if it does not — well then I don’t want to hear you complain about a violation of the Constitution, EVER, because the Constitution cannot be violated if it does not mean what it says.
“Don’t you think the Supreme Court in 1798— less than 10 years after the Constitution was ratified and when the Supreme Court included at least one Justice who had signed the Constitution—might have had some idea of what the Constitution meant.”
They were all in the tank for Obama.
As an aside, you need to make sure people understand this is just your opinion. There's no evidence that anyone wanted to adopt the meaning of the British common law term 'natural born subject.'