Grammatical Form and Usage
The phrase isn't grammatically correct in Latin, as it consists of the preposition ex, the preposition post, and a noun with the wrong grammatical case to agree with post. Indeed, the Latin for this phrase is actually two words, ex postfacto, literally, out of a postfactum (an after-deed), or more naturally, from a law passed afterward.
Therefore, ex post facto or ex postfacto is natively an adverbial phrase, a usage demonstrated by the sentence "He was convicted ex post facto (i.e., from a law passed after his crime)." The law itself would rightfully be a postfactum law (lex postfacta); nevertheless, despite its redundant or circular nature, the phrase an ex post facto law is used.
In Poland the phrase lex retro non agit ("the law does not operate retroactively") is often used.
Read more about this topic: Ex Post Facto Law
Famous quotes containing the words grammatical, form and/or usage:
“As a particularly dramatic gesture, he throws wide his arms and whacks the side of the barn with the heavy cane he uses to stab at contesting bidders. With more vehemence than grammatical elegance, he calls upon the great god Caveat Emptor to witness with what niggardly stinginess these flinty sons of Scotland make cautious offers for what is beyond any question the finest animal ever beheld.”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)