Sotomayor, J., dissenting
B
To shore up its argument that the ACCA’s use of the phrase “physical force,” at least in the context of robbery, takes on the common-law meaning of “force,” the majority invokes the history of the ACCA. Statutory history is no help to the majority here.
As the majority notes, a precursor to the ACCA prescribed a mandatory-minimum sentence for people convicted of firearm offenses who had three qualifying prior convictions “for robbery or burglary.” 18 U. S. C. App. §1202(a) (1982 ed., Supp. II). That statute defined robbery, as relevant, as “the taking of the property of another… by force or violence.” §1202(c)(8) (1982 ed., Supp. II). See ante, at 3–4. In other words, it is undisputed that at one point, in a previous statute, Congress enumerated robbery as a qualifying predicate and used the words “force or violence” to describe a generic version of the crime.
Then, in 1986, Congress changed the statute, substituting instead the language we know today. See Career Criminals Amendment Act of 1986, §1402, 100 Stat. 3207–39. Gone was any explicit reference to “robbery”; in its place came not only the elements clause (our focus here) but also the enumerated clause (which retained an express reference to “burglary” but omitted “robbery”) and the capacious residual clause (struck down in 2015). See ante, at 6; supra, at 2; see also Taylor, 495 U. S., at 582–584. So Congress did two salient things: It expanded the predicates in general, and it deleted an express reference to robbery.
The majority reasons that because (1) the old law’s definition of “robbery” as a taking involving “force or violence” matched various common-law definitions of robbery, (2) Congress kept the word “force” (though not “or violence”) in the new law’s elements clause while deleting the word “robbery,” and (3) Congress meant to expand the
