Harris v. United States

Issue: (1) Whether “violent force” is an element of robbery, as defined at common law, such that it constitutes a “violent felony” under the elements clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 10th and 11th Circuits have held, or whether the force necessary to commit common law robbery is too slight to qualify as violent force, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th and 8th Circuits have held; and (2) whether, when a federal court applies Moncrieffe v. Holder, which states that whether an offense qualifies as a “violent felony” depends on whether “the minimum conduct criminalized by the state statute” measures up to the federal definition of a “violent felony,” it should consult common law authorities to determine the minimum conduct connoted by the common law term of art, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has done, or whether federal courts should assume that “force” and “violence” carry the ordinary meanings given by general-usage dictionaries, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit did in this case.