Yates v. United States: A Case Study in Overcriminalization

Abstract

Yates v. United States is textbook example of overcriminalization run amuck. Although Congress generally is responsible for overcriminalization because it enacts needless penal statutes, oftentimes criminalizing morally blameless conduct or allowing disproportionately severe penalties, Yates demonstrates that the federal courts are also to blame for the resulting injustices. Courts often extend criminal laws past any reasonable boundary, essentially creating the very common law crimes the federal courts have long been forbidden to fashion.

The Supreme Court should use Yates as an opportunity to set an example for the lower federal courts of how the courts should counteract overcriminalization through statutory construction. The way to do this is for courts to resist the allure of specious “plain meaning” arguments and, in the many cases of textual ambiguity, to exercise informed judicial discretion in light of the myriad potential dangers of expansive interpretations of criminal statutes. Unless the Supreme Court leads by example, prosecutors will continue to exploit poorly defined federal crimes to produce miscarriages of justice of the kind which occurred in Yates.

Keywords: Yates, overcriminalization, statutory construction, statutory interpretation, federal criminal law, Sarbanes-Oxley, Enron, obstruction, rule of lenity, proportionality, overpunishment

JEL Classification: K14, K40, K42