Jackson, J., concurring
to “look beyond Chapter 73” to “determine whether an alien’s prior offense ‘relat[es] to obstruction of justice’ ” because §1101(a)(43)(S)’s “text … indicates Congress’s intention to reference Chapter 73”). In deciding the cases before us, I would not want to rule out (even inadvertently) the possibility that Chapter 73 is Congress’s actual benchmark with respect to what qualifies as an “offense relating to obstruction of justice” for §1101(a)(43)(S) purposes, rather than just a mere clue to some platonic, judicially divined meaning of Congress’s chosen words.
I believe that hewing closely to Congress’s will in this regard is especially important where (as here) making the determination of which offenses qualify implicates the “drastic” deportation sanction. Jordan v. De George, 341 U. S. 223, 231 (1951). In our constitutional system, the Legislature makes legal policy judgments regarding the particular circumstances that trigger the consequences that are associated with criminal convictions. Accord, United States v. Lanier, 520 U. S. 259, 265, and n. 5 (1997). And it seems at least plausible that Congress’s description of certain “aggravated felon[ies],” §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), as “offense[s] relating to obstruction of justice,” §1101(a)(43)(S), may embody its judgment to peg that subset of aggravated felonies to Chapter 73, not an intent to leave the category without form for future judicial refinement. Of course, if Congress has already thus decided which obstruction-related convictions so trigger the INA’s aggravated-felony provision, this Court need not, and indeed should not, cobble together a “generic” offense definition from nonstatutory sources (which risks sweeping in offenses that Congress did not mean to capture).
Here, the Court correctly emphasizes Chapter 73’s importance in the course of analyzing whether a possible predicate offense must have a nexus to a pending proceeding in order to qualify as an aggravated felony. Ante, at 4. But these parties have not fully ventilated the arguments for
