Page:Denard Stokeling v. United States.pdf/7

Rh the taking robbery, however slight the resistance” (emphasis added)). The common law also did not distinguish between gradations of “violence.” If an act physically overcame a victim’s resistance, “however slight” that resistance might be, it necessarily constituted violence. Ibid.; 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 242 (1769) (distinguishing “taking… by force” from “privately stealing,” and stating that the use of this “violence” differentiates robbery from other larcenies); see also 3 id., at 120 (explaining, in the battery context, that “the law cannot draw the line between different degrees of violence, and therefore totally prohibits the first and lowest stage of it”).

The overlap between “force” and “violence” at common law is reflected in modern legal and colloquial usage of these terms. “Force” means “[p]ower, violence, or pressure directed against a person or thing,” Black’s Law Dictionary 656 (7th ed. 1999), or “unlawful violence threatened or committed against persons or property,” Random House Dictionary of the English Language 748 (2d ed. 1987). Likewise, “violence” implies force, including an “unjust or unwarranted use of force.” Black’s Law Dictionary, at 1564; accord, Random House Dictionary, at 2124 (“rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment,” or “an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws”).

Against this background, Congress, in the original ACCA, defined robbery as requiring the use of “force or violence”–a clear reference to the common law of robbery. See Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U. S. 305, 320, n. 13 (2010) (“Congress ‘is understood to legislate against a background of common-law… principles’ ”). And the level of “force” or “violence” needed at common law was by this time well established: “Sufficient force must be used to overcome resistance… however slight the resistance.” Clark & Marshall 553.