Court made no pretense that the year-and-a-day rule was 'bad' from the outset; rather, it asserted the need for the rule, as a means of assuring causality of the death, had disappeared with time. Blackstone—and the Framers who were formed by Blackstone—would clearly have regarded that change in law as a matter for the legislature, beyond the power of the court.... That explains why the Constitution restricted only the legislature from enacting ex post facto laws. Under accepted norms of judicial process [that prevailed in the time of the Framers], an ex post facto law... was simply not an option for the courts. For these historical reasons, Scalia believed, the majority should not have circumvented the strictures of the Ex Post Facto Clause by analyzing what the Tennessee Supreme Court had done under the rubric of due process. "I find it impossible to believe, as the Court does, that this strong sentiment [against ex post facto lawmaking] attached only to retroactive laws passed by the legislature, and would not apply equally to a court's production of the same result through disregard of the traditional limits on judicial power." Scalia also disagreed with the conclusion that Rogers had had fair warning that the year-and-a-day rule was so moribund as to have been effectively abolished. Other common-law crimes had outmoded elements, and certainly a common-law court could not say those elements no longer existed because the ancient rationale for them had changed—asportation, as an element of common-law larceny, or "breaking the close" as an element of burglary, for instance. (Of course, today this behavior would be subject to punishment under statutory definitions of crimes rather than common-law definitions.) Rogers might have known that the rule was outmoded, but he could not have known that the rule had ceased to exist until the court or the legislature told him so. And although the rule might have had dubious status in Tennessee law, the Tennessee Supreme Court had explained that it was the law, and the Court typically takes such statements at face value. In the absence of any fair warning, as he saw it, Scalia concluded that Rogers's conviction for murder was not valid. See also List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 532 List of United States Supreme Court cases External links United States Supreme Court cases United States criminal due process case law 2001 in United States case law United