This Comment seeks to resolve an ongoing dispute among courts regarding the correct interpretation of “contrary to law” in 18 U.S.C. § 545, a statute that criminalizes the unlawful importation of goods. In particular, courts disagree about whether “contrary to law” includes administrative regulatory violations, which would massively expand the applicability of § 545’s severe criminal penalties. 

This Comment argues that analyzing previous versions of § 545 and applying canons of statutory interpretation provide support for a narrow interpretation of the statute. But these lines of analysis do not definitively establish that this interpretation is correct. As a result, this Comment considers the implications of the nondelegation doctrine, which provides a more conclusive resolution to the ongoing circuit split. Specifically, because of the structure of § 545 and because the statute itself provides no authority for agencies to promulgate new regulations, allowing administrative violations to serve as predicate offenses for § 545 would potentially permit agencies to independently use this statute to transform civil regulatory violations into criminal offenses. Therefore, to avoid separation of powers concerns, only regulatory violations that are explicitly criminalized by other statutes should qualify as predicate violations that can trigger § 545’s penalties.

本评论旨在解决法院之间关于正确解释 18 USC § 545 中“违反法律”的持续争议，该法规将非法进口货物定为刑事犯罪。特别是，法院对“违反法律”是否包括违反行政法规的行为意见不一，这将大大扩大第 545 条严厉刑事处罚的适用范围。 

该评论认为，分析 § 545 的先前版本并应用法定解释准则为对法规进行狭义解释提供了支持。但是这些分析并不能明确地证明这种解释是正确的。因此，本评论考虑了非授权原则的含义，它为正在进行的巡回法院分裂提供了更有说服力的解决方案。具体而言，由于 § 545 的结构以及法规本身没有授权机构颁布新法规，允许行政违规作为 § 545 的上游犯罪可能会允许机构独立使用该法规将民事法规违规转化为刑事犯罪。因此，为了避免三权分立的问题，