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Retroactive (or ex post facto) law — i.e., a law that punishes a man for an action which was not legally defined as a crime at the time he committed it — is rejected by and contrary to the entire tradition of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. It is a form of persecution practiced only in dictatorships and forbidden by every civilized code of law. It is specifically forbidden by the United States Constitution. It is not supposed to exist in the United States and it is not applied to anyone — except to businessmen. A case in which a man cannot know until he is convicted whether the action he took in the past was legal or illegal, is certainly a case of retroactive law.

“America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 50
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