The Bill of Rights of the 1935 Constitution then in force—as does our present (1987) Constitution—provides: “No ex post facto law or bill of attainder shall be enacted.” While ex post facto laws are statutes that make an act criminal retroactively (i.e., the act was not a crime at the time it was committed but is sought to be penalized by the subsequent law), a bill of attainder is a statute that imposes a penalty without a trial or judicial process to determine guilt. Both kinds are considered antithetical to the concept of “constitutional due process” or the demands of reasonableness and “fair play”.
