Sotomayor, J., dissenting
obstruction of justice,” while §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii) refers to “criminal activity … involving … obstruction of justice” “or any similar activity,” these textual differences only reinforce that Congress understood “obstruction of justice” and “witness tampering” to have quite different ordinary meanings. Given that §1101(a)(15)(U)(iii) covers not just “obstruction of justice” but “any similar activity,” one must infer that Congress took witness tampering to be not only distinct from obstruction of justice, but distinct enough to need separate mention from “obstruction of justice” “or any similar activity.”
Nor does it matter that §1101(a)(15)(U) was added to the INA in 2000 as part of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act. 114 Stat. 1534. On the contrary, the fact that Congress understood “obstruction of justice” to be distinct from “witness tampering” just four years after enacting §1101(a)(43)(S) is good evidence Congress understood the same to be true in 1996, when it deemed “obstruction of justice” an aggravated felony under the INA. After all, “no one here suggests that the ordinary understanding in the years after 1996 somehow differed from the ordinary understanding in 1996.” Ante, at 5, n. 1.
4
State law points to the same result as the other indicia of meaning examined thus far. State law is relevant because, in discerning the generic meaning of terms with common-law roots, the Court will often survey state statutes in effect at the time the federal statute in question was enacted. See Taylor, 495 U. S., at 598–599 (considering how “burglary” was understood “in the criminal codes of most States”). Here, when §1101(a)(43)(S) was enacted in 1996, 13 States and the District of Columbia had a crime deemed “obstruction of” or “obstructing” “justice.” The majority of those state statutes (eight in total) required a connection to an investigation or proceeding that was pending, or at least
