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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 94-514
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UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v.
MICHAEL E. GAUDIN
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the ninth circuit
[June 19, 1995]

  Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.
  In the trial at issue here, respondent was convicted of
making material false statements in a matter within the
jurisdiction of a federal agency, in violation of 18
U. S. C. 1001.  The question presented is whether it
was constitutional for the trial judge to refuse to submit
the question of -materiality- to the jury.

                            I
  In the 1980s, respondent engaged in a number of real
estate transactions financed by loans insured by the
Federal Housing Administration (FHA), an agency within
the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD).  Respondent would purchase rental housing,
renovate it, obtain an inflated appraisal, and sell it to
a -strawbuyer- (a friend or relative), for whom respond-
ent would arrange an FHA-insured mortgage loan.
Then, as prearranged, respondent would repurchase the
property (at a small profit to the strawbuyer) and
assume the mortgage loan.  Twenty-nine of these ven-
tures went into default.
  Respondent was charged by federal indictment with,
among other things, multiple counts of making false
statements on federal loan documents in violation of 18
U. S. C. 1001.  Two of these counts charged that
respondent had made false statements on HUD/FHA
form 92800-5 by knowingly inflating the appraised value
of the mortgaged property.  The other false-statement
counts charged that respondent had made misrepresenta-
tions on HUD/FHA form HUD-1, the settlement form
used in closing the sales of the properties.  Line 303 of
this form requires disclosure of the closing costs to be
paid or received by the borrower/buyer and the seller.
The forms executed by respondent showed that the
buyer was to pay some of the closing costs, whereas in
fact he, the seller, had arranged to pay all of them.  To
prove the materiality of these false statements, the
Government offered the testimony of several persons
charged with administering FHA/HUD programs, who
explained why the requested information was important.
  At the close of the evidence, the United States District
Court for the District of Montana instructed the jury
that, to convict respondent, the Government was re-
quired to prove, inter alia, that the alleged false state-
ments were material to the activities and decisions of
HUD.  But, the court further instructed, -[t]he issue of
materiality . . . is not submitted to you for your decision
but rather is a matter for the decision of the court.  You
are instructed that the statements charged in the
indictment are material statements.-  App. 24, 29.  The
jury convicted respondent of the 1001 charges.
  A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
reversed these convictions because Circuit precedent
dictated that materiality in a 1001 prosecution be
decided by the jury.  997 F. 2d 1267 (1993).  On
rehearing en banc, the Court of Appeals stood by this
precedent.  It held that taking the question of material-
ity from the jury denied respondent a right guaranteed
by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United
States Constitution.  28 F. 3d 943 (1994).  We granted
certiorari.  513 U. S. ___ (1995).

                           II
  Section 1001 of Title 18 provides:
      -Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of
any department or agency of the United States
knowingly and wilfully falsifies, conceals or covers
up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact,
or makes any false, fictitious or fraudulent state-
ments or representations, or makes or uses any false
writing or document knowing the same to contain
any false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or entry,
shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned
not more than five years, or both.-
It is uncontested that conviction under this provision
requires that the statements be -material- to the
Government inquiry, and that -materiality- is an
element of the offense that the Government must prove.
The parties also agree on the definition of -materiality-:
the statement must have -a natural tendency to influ-
ence, or [be] capable of influencing, the decision of the
decisionmaking body to which it was addressed.-
Kungys v. United States, 485 U. S. 759, 770 (1988)
(internal quotation marks omitted).  The question for our
resolution is whether respondent was entitled to have
this element of the crime determined by the jury.
  The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitu-
tion guarantees that no one will be deprived of liberty
without -due process of law-; and the Sixth, that -[i]n
all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.-
We have held that these provisions require criminal
convictions to rest upon a jury determination that the
defendant is guilty of every element of the crime with
which he is charged, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. ___, ___ (1993) (slip op.,
at 2-3).  The right to have a jury make the ultimate
determination of guilt has an impressive pedigree.
Blackstone described -trial by jury- as requiring that
-the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the
shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should
afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of
twelve of [the defendant's] equals and neighbors . . . .-
4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England
343 (1769) (emphasis added).  Justice Story wrote that
the -trial by jury- guaranteed by the Constitution was
-generally understood to mean . . . a trial by a jury of
twelve men, impartially selected, who must unanimously
concur in the guilt of the accused before a legal convic-
tion can be had.- 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the
Constitution of the United States 541, n. 2 (4th ed.
1873) (emphasis added and deleted).  This right was
designed -to guard against a spirit of oppression and
tyranny on the part of rulers,- and -was from very early
times insisted on by our ancestors in the parent country,
as the great bulwark of their civil and political liber-
ties.-  Id., at 540-541.  See also Duncan v. Louisiana,
391 U. S. 145, 151-154 (1968) (tracing the history of
trial by jury).

                           III
  Thus far, the resolution of the question before us
seems simple.  The Constitution gives a criminal
defendant the right to demand that a jury find him
guilty of all the elements of the crime with which he is
charged; one of the elements in the present case is
materiality; respondent therefore had a right to have the
jury decide materiality.  To escape the force of this logic,
the Government offers essentially three arguments.
Having conceded the minor premise-that materiality is
an element of the offense-the Government argues first,
that the major premise is flawed; second, that (essen-
tially) a page of history is worth a volume of logic, and
uniform practice simply excludes the element of materi-
ality from the syllogism; and third, that stare decisis
requires the judgment here to be reversed.

                            A
  As to the first, the Government's position is that
-materiality,- whether as a matter of logic or history, is
a -legal- question, and that although we have sometimes
spoken of -requiring the jury to decide `all the elements
of a criminal offense,' e.g., Estelle v. McGuire, [502 U. S.
62, 69] (1991); see Victor v. Nebraska, [511 U. S. ___,
___ (slip op., at 1)] (1994); Patterson v. New York, 432
U. S. 197, 210 (1977), the principle actually applies to
only the factual components of the essential elements.-
Brief for United States 33 (emphasis added).  The
Government claims that this understanding of the jury's
role dates back to Sparf & Hansen v. United States, 156
U. S. 51 (1895), and is reaffirmed by recent decisions of
this Court.
  By limiting the jury's constitutionally prescribed role
to -the factual components of the essential elements- the
Government surely does not mean to concede that the
jury must pass upon all elements that contain some
factual component, for that test is amply met here.
Deciding whether a statement is -material- requires the
determination of at least two subsidiary questions of
purely historical fact: (a) -what statement was made?-;
and (b) -what decision was the agency trying to make?-.
The ultimate question: (c) -whether the statement was
material to the decision,- requires applying the legal
standard of materiality (quoted above) to these historical
facts.  What the Government apparently argues is that
the Constitution requires only that (a) and (b) be
determined by the jury, and that (c) may be determined
by the judge.  We see two difficulties with this.  First,
the application-of-legal-standard-to-fact sort of question
posed by (c), commonly called a -mixed question of law
and fact,- has typically been resolved by juries.  See J.
Thayer, A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at Common
Law 194, 249-250 (1898).  Indeed, our cases have recog-
nized in other contexts that the materiality inquiry,
involving as it does -delicate assessments of the infer-
ences a `reasonable [decisionmaker]' would draw from a
given set of facts and the significance of those inferences
to him . . . [is] peculiarly on[e] for the trier of fact.-
TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U. S. 438,
450 (1976) (securities fraud); McLanahan v. Universal
Ins. Co., 1 Pet. 170, 188-189, 191 (1828) (materiality of
false statements in insurance applications).
  The second difficulty with the Government's position
is that it has absolutely no historical support.  If it were
true, the law books would be full of cases, regarding
materiality and innumerable other -mixed-law-and-fact-
issues, in which the criminal jury was required to come
forth with -findings of fact- pertaining to each of the
essential elements, leaving it to the judge to apply the
law to those facts and render the ultimate verdict of
-guilty- or -not guilty.-  We know of no such case.
Juries at the time of the framing could not be forced to
produce mere -factual findings,- but were entitled to
deliver a general verdict pronouncing the defendant's
guilt or innocence.  Morgan, A Brief History of Special
Verdicts and Special Interrogatories, 32 Yale L. J. 575,
591 (1922).  See also G. Clementson, Special Verdicts
and Special Findings by Juries 49 (1905); Alschuler &
Deiss, A Brief History of the Criminal Jury in the
United States, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 867, 912-913 (1994).
Justice Chase's defense to one of the charges in his 1805
impeachment trial was that -he well knows that it is
the right of juries in criminal cases, to give a general
verdict of acquittal, which cannot be set aside on
account of its being contrary to law, and that hence
results the power of juries, to decide on the law as well
as on the facts, in all criminal cases.  This power he
holds to be a sacred part of our legal privileges . . . .-
1 S. Smith & T. Lloyd, Trial of Samuel Chase 34 (1805).
  Sparf & Hansen, supra, the case on which the Govern-
ment relies, had nothing to do with the issue before us
here.  The question there was whether the jury could be
deprived of the power to determine, not only historical
facts, not only mixed questions of fact and law, but pure
questions of law in a criminal case.  As the foregoing
quotation from Justice Chase suggests, many thought
the jury had such power.  See generally Alschuler &
Deiss, supra, at 902-916.  We decided that it did not.
In criminal cases, as in civil, we held, the judge must be
permitted to instruct the jury on the law and to insist
that the jury follow his instructions. 156 U. S., at
105-106.  But our decision in no way undermined the
historical and constitutionally guaranteed right of
criminal defendants to demand that the jury decide guilt
or innocence on every issue, which includes application
of the law to the facts.  To the contrary, Justice Harlan,
writing for the Court, explained the many judicial
assertions of the jury's right to determine both law and
fact as expressions of -the principle, that when the
question is compounded of law and fact, a general
verdict, ex necessitate, disposes of the case in hand, both
as to law and fact.-  Id., at 90 (emphasis in original).
He gave as an example the 1807 treason trial of Aaron
Burr in which Chief Justice Marshall charged the jury
that -`levying war is an act compounded of law and fact;
of which the jury, aided by the court must judge. . . .
[And] hav[ing] now heard the opinion of the court on the
law of the case[,] [t]hey will apply that law to the facts,
and will find a verdict of guilty or not guilty as their
own consciences may direct.'-  Id., at 67 (quoting 2
Burr's Trial 548, 550 (D. Robertson ed. 1875)) (emphasis
in original).  Other expressions of the same principle
abound.  See United States v. Battiste, 24 F. Cas. 1042,
1043 (No. 14,545) (CC Mass. 1835) (Story, J., sitting as
Circuit Justice) (the jury's general verdict is -necessarily
compounded of [both] law and fact-).  As Thayer wrote
at the end of the 19th century: -From the beginning . . .
it was perceived that any general verdict, such as . . .
not guilty, involved a conclusion of law, and that the
jury did, in a sense, in such cases answer a question of
law.-  Thayer, supra, at 253.
  The more modern authorities the Government cites
also do not support its concept of the criminal jury as
mere factfinder.  Although each contains language
discussing the jury's role as factfinder, see Sullivan v.
Louisiana, 508 U. S. ___ (1993); County Court of Ulster
Cty. v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, 156 (1979); Patterson v.
New York, 432 U. S. 197, 206 (1977); In re Winship, 397
U. S. 358, 364 (1970), each also confirms that the jury's
constitutional responsibility is not merely to determine
the facts, but to apply the law to those facts and draw
the ultimate conclusion of guilt or innocence.  The point
is put with unmistakable clarity in Allen, which involved
the constitutionality of statutory inferences and pre-
sumptions.  Such devices, Allen said, can help
-the trier of fact to determine the existence of an
element of the crime-that is, an `ultimate' or `ele-
mental' fact-from the existence of one or more `evi-
dentiary' or `basic' facts . . . . Nonetheless, in
criminal cases, the ultimate test of any device's
constitutional validity in a given case remains
constant: the device must not undermine the fact-
finder's responsibility at trial, based on evidence
adduced by the State, to find the ultimate facts
beyond a reasonable doubt.-  Allen, supra, at 156.
See also Sullivan, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 2) (-The
right [to jury trial] includes, of course, as its most
important element, the right to have the jury, rather
than the judge, reach the requisite finding of `guilty'-);
Patterson, supra, at 204; Winship, supra, at 361, 363.

                            B
  The Government next argues that, even if the jury is
generally entitled to pass on all elements of a crime,
there is a historical exception for materiality determi-
nations in perjury prosecutions.  We do not doubt that
historical practice is relevant to what the Constitution
means by such concepts as trial by jury, see Murray's
Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How.
272, 276-277 (1856); Holland v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 474,
481 (1990), and it is precisely historical practice that we
have relied on in concluding that the jury must find all
the elements.  The existence of a unique historical ex-
ception to this principle-and an exception that reduces
the power of the jury precisely when it is most impor-
tant, i.e., in a prosecution not for harming another
individual, but for offending against the Government
itself-would be so extraordinary that the evidence for
it would have to be convincing indeed.  It is not so.
  The practice of having courts determine the material-
ity of false statements in perjury prosecutions is neither
as old, nor as uniform, as the Government suggests.  In
England, no pre-Revolution cases appear to have
addressed the question, and the judges reached differing
results when the issue finally arose in the mid-19th
century.  Compare Queen v. Lavey, 3 Car. & K. 26, 30,
175 Eng. Rep. 448, 450 (Q. B. 1850) (materiality is a
jury question); Queen v. Goddard, 2 F. & F. 361, 175
Eng. Rep. 1096  (1861) (same), with Queen v. Courtney,
5 Ir. C. L. 434, 439 (Ct. Crim. App. 1856) (dictum)
(materiality is a question for the judge); Queen v.
Gibbon, Le. & Ca. 109, 113-114, 169 Eng. Rep. 1324,
1326 (1861) (same).  It was not until 1911, 120 years
after the adoption of our Bill of Rights, that the rule the
Government argues for was finally adopted in Eng-
land-not by judicial decision but by Act of Parliament.
See Perjury Act of 1911, 1(6) 182 Geo. V, ch. 6).
  Much more importantly, there was also no clear
practice of having the judge determine the materiality
question in this country at or near the time the Bill of
Rights was adopted.  The Government cites Power v.
Price, 16 Wend. 450 (N. Y. 1836), as -[t]he earliest
reported case on the question- whether -materiality in
perjury prosecutions is a question for the court rather
than the jury,- claiming that there -New York's highest
court held that a trial judge had correctly reserved the
question of materiality to itself.-  Brief for United States
18.  Power held nothing even close to this.  Power was
not a perjury case; indeed, it was not even a criminal
prosecution.  It was a civil action in which Price sued
Power for the slander of imputing to him the crime of
perjury.  The Court of Appeals held that Price did not
need to prove the materiality of the alleged false
statement in order to make out a prima facie case; but
that Power could raise immateriality as an affirmative
defense negating intent to impute perjury.  16 Wend., at
455-456.  It then said that the trial court -was clearly
right in instructing the jury that the testimony given on
the former trial was proved to be material,- since -it
merely decided a question of law, arising upon the proof
of facts as to which there was no dispute or contrariety
of testimony,- id., at 456.  But the courts' power to
resolve mixed-law-and-fact questions in civil cases is not
at issue here; civil and criminal juries' required roles are
obviously not identical, or else there could be no directed
verdicts for civil plaintiffs.  The other early case relied
upon by the Government, Steinman v. McWilliams, 6 Pa.
170, 177-178 (1847), another slander case, is inapt for
the same reason.  The earliest American case involving
the point that we have been able to find places the
Government itself in opposition to its position here.  In
United States v. Cowing, 25 F. Cas. 680, 681 (No.
14,880) (CC D.C. 1835), the United States argued that
materiality in a perjury prosecution was a matter for the
jury's consideration, citing an unpublished decision of
the General Court of Virginia.  The federal court, how-
ever, did not address the issue.
  State and federal cases appear not to have addressed
the question until the latter part of the 19th century, at
which time they do not display anything like the -virtual
unanimity- claimed by the Government.  Brief for
United States 18.  Some of the opinions cited by the
Government, asserting that materiality was a question
of -law- for the judge, appear to have involved either
demurrers to the indictment or appeals from convictions
in which the case for materiality was so weak that no
reasonable juror could credit it-so that even on our
view of the matter the case should not have gone to the
jury.  (The prosecution's failure to provide minimal evi-
dence of materiality, like its failure to provide minimal
evidence of any other element, of course raises a ques-
tion of -law- that warrants dismissal.)  See, e.g., United
States v. Shinn, 14 F. 447, 452 (CC Ore. 1882); United
States v. Singleton, 54 F. 488, 489 (SD Ala. 1892);
United States v. Bedgood, 49 F. 54, 60 (SD Ala. 1891);
Nelson v. State, 32 Ark. Rep. 192, 195 (1877).  And
some of the other cited cases involve the convicted
defendant's claim that materiality should not have been
decided by the jury, so that even if the issue was not
one of the prosecution's failure to make a threshold case,
it did not arise in a context in which the defendant's
right to jury trial was at issue.  See, e.g., Cothran v.
State, 39 Miss. 541, 547 (1860); State v. Williams, 30
Mo. 364, 367 (1860); State v. Lewis, 10 Kan. 157, 160
(1872); People v. Lem You, 97 Cal. 224, 228-230, 32
p. 11, 12 (1893); Thompson v. People, 26 Colo. 496, 504,
59 P. 51, 54-55 (1899); Barnes v. State, 15 Ohio C. C.
14, 25-26 (1897).
  Even assuming, however, that all the Government's
last-half-of-the-19th-century cases fully stand for the
proposition that the defendant has no right to jury
determination of materiality, there are cases that
support the other view.  See Commonwealth v. Grant,
116 Mass. 17, 20 (1874); Lawrence v. State, 2 Tex. Crim.
479, 483-484 (1877); State v. Spencer, 45 La. Ann. 1,
11-12, 12 So. 135, 138 (1893); Young v. People, 134 Ill.
37, 42, 24 N. E. 1070, 1071 (1890) (approving the
treatment of materiality as -a mixed question of law and
fact, and thus one for the jury-).  At most there had
developed a division of authority on the point, as the
treatise writers of the period amply demonstrate.
Bishop in 1872 took the position that -[p]ractically, . . .
the whole subject is to be passed upon by the jury,
under instructions from the judge, as involving, like
most other cases, mixed questions of law and of fact.-
2 J. Bishop, Commentaries on Law of Criminal Proce-
dure 935, p. 508 (2d ed.).  May's 1881 treatise reported
that -[w]hether materiality is a question of law for the
court or of fact for a jury, is a point upon which the
authorities are about equally divided.-  J. May, Law of
Crimes 188, p. 205.  Greenleaf, writing in 1883, sided
with Bishop (-It seems that the materiality of the mat-
ter assigned is a question for the jury-), 3 S. Greenleaf,
Law of Evidence 195, p. 189, n. (b) (14th ed.)-but two
editions later, in 1899, said that the question was one
for the judge, 3 S. Greenleaf, Law of Evidence 195,
p. 196, n. 2 (16th ed.).
  In sum, we find nothing like a consistent historical
tradition supporting the proposition that the element of
materiality in perjury prosecutions is to be decided by
the judge.  Since that proposition is contrary to the
uniform general understanding (and we think the only
understanding consistent with principle) that the Fifth
and Sixth Amendments require conviction by a jury of
all elements of the crime, we must reject those cases
that have embraced it.  Though uniform postratification
practice can shed light upon the meaning of an ambigu-
ous constitutional provision, the practice here is not
uniform, and the core meaning of the constitutional
guarantees is unambiguous.

                            C
  The Government's final argument is that the principle
of stare decisis requires that we deny petitioner's
constitutional claim, citing our decision in Sinclair v.
United States, 279 U. S. 263 (1929).  That case is not
controlling in the strictest sense, since it involved the
assertion of a Sixth Amendment right to have the jury
determine, not -materiality- under 1001, but rather
-pertinency- under that provision of Title 2 making it
criminal contempt of Congress to refuse to answer a
-question pertinent to [a] question under [congressional]
inquiry,- Rev. Stat. 102, 2 U. S. C. 192.  The two
questions are similar, however, and the essential
argument made by respondent here was made by peti-
tioner in that case, who sought reversal of his conviction
because of the trial court's failure to submit the question
of pertinency to the jury: -[I]t has been said over and
over again, that every essential ingredient of the crime
must be proven to the satisfaction of the jury beyond a
reasonable doubt.-  Brief for Appellant in Sinclair v.
United States, O.T. 1928, No. 555, p. 109; 279 U. S., at
277 (argument for appellant).  Though we did not ad-
dress the constitutional argument explicitly, we held
that the question of pertinency was -rightly decided by
the court as one of law.-  Id., at 298.  And tying the
case even closer to the present one was our dictum that
pertinency -is not essentially different from . . . materi-
ality of false testimony,- which -when an element in the
crime of perjury, is one for the court.-  Ibid.  Thus,
while Sinclair is not strictly controlling, it is fair to say
that we cannot hold for respondent today while still
adhering to the reasoning and the holding of that case.
  But the reasoning of Sinclair has already been
repudiated in a number of respects.  The opinion rested
upon the assumption that -pertinency- is a pure ques-
tion of law-that is, it does -not depend upon the
probative value of evidence.-  Ibid.  We contradicted that
assumption in Deutch v. United States, 367 U. S. 456
(1961), reversing a conviction under 192 because -the
Government at the trial failed to carry its burden of
proving the pertinence of the questions.-  Id., at 469.
Though it had introduced documentary and testimonial
evidence -to show the subject of the subcommittee's
inquiry,- it had failed to provide evidence to support the
conclusion that the petitioner's false statement was
pertinent to that subject.
  Our holding in Sinclair rested also upon the assertion
that -[i]t would be incongruous and contrary to well-
established principles to leave the determination of
[the] matter [of pertinency] to a jury,- 279 U. S., at 299,
citing ICC v. Brimson, 154 U. S. 447, 489 (1894), and
Horning v. District of Columbia, 254 U. S. 135 (1920).
Both the cases cited to support that assertion have since
been repudiated.  Brimson's holding that no right to jury
trial attaches to criminal contempt proceedings was
overruled in Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 194, 198-200
(1968).  Horning's holding that it was harmless error, if
error at all, for a trial judge effectively to order the jury
to convict, see 254 U. S., at 138, has been proved an
unfortunate anomaly in light of subsequent cases.  See
Quercia v. United States, 289 U. S. 466, 468, 472 (1933);
Bihn v. United States, 328 U. S. 633, 637-639 (1946).
  Other reasoning in Sinclair, not yet repudiated, we
repudiate now.  It said that the question of pertinency
-may be likened to those concerning relevancy at the
trial of issues in court,- which -is uniformly held [to be]
a question of law- for the court.  279 U. S., at 298.  But
how relevancy is treated for purposes of determining the
admissibility of evidence says nothing about how rele-
vancy should be treated when (like -pertinence- or -ma-
teriality-) it is made an element of a criminal offense.
It is commonplace for the same mixed question of law
and fact to be assigned to the court for one purpose, and
to the jury for another.  The question of probable cause
to conduct a search, for example, is resolved by the
judge when it arises in the context of a motion to
suppress evidence obtained in the search; but by the
jury when it is one of the elements of the crime of
depriving a person of constitutional rights under color
of law, see 18 U. S. C.  241-242.  Cf. United States v.
McQueeney, 674 F. 2d 109, 114 (CA1 1982); United
States v. Barker, 546 F. 2d 940, 947 (CADC 1976).
  That leaves as the sole prop for Sinclair its reliance
upon the unexamined proposition, never before endorsed
by this Court, that materiality in perjury cases (which
is analogous to pertinence in contempt cases) is a
question of law for the judge.  But just as there is
nothing to support Sinclair except that proposition, there
is, as we have seen, nothing to support that proposition
except Sinclair.  While this perfect circularity has a
certain aesthetic appeal, it has no logic.  We do not
minimize the role that stare decisis plays in our juris-
prudence.  See Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491
U. S. 164, 172 (1989).  That role is somewhat reduced,
however, in the case of a procedural rule such as this,
which does not serve as a guide to lawful behavior.  See
Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828 (1991).  It is
reduced all the more when the rule is not only proce-
dural but rests upon an interpretation of the Constitu-
tion.  See ibid.  And we think stare decisis cannot
possibly be controlling when, in addition to those factors,
the decision in question has been proved manifestly
erroneous, and its underpinnings eroded, by subsequent
decisions of this Court.  Rodriguez de Quijas v.
Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477, 480-
481 (1989); Andrews v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co.,
406 U. S. 320 (1972).
  The Government also claims stare decisis benefit from
our decision in Kungys v. United States, 485 U. S. 759
(1988), which held that, in appellate review of a District
Court (nonjury) denaturalization proceeding, the appel-
late court's newly asserted standard of materiality could
be applied to the facts by the appellate court itself,
rather than requiring remand to the District Court for
that application.  Id., at 772.  But as we have observed,
the characterization of a mixed question of law and fact
for one purpose does not govern its characterization for
all purposes.  It is hard to imagine questions more
diverse than, on the one hand, whether an appellate
court must remand to a district court for a determina-
tion of materiality in a denaturalization proceeding
(Kungys) and, on the other hand, whether the Constitu-
tion requires the finding of the element of materiality in
a criminal prosecution to be made by the jury (the
present case).  It can be argued that Kungys itself did
not heed this advice, since it relied upon both our prior
decision in Sinclair, see 485 U. S., at 772, and a
decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Sixth Circuit holding that materiality in a 1001
prosecution is a question of -law- for the court, id.
(quoting United States v. Abadi, 706 F. 2d 178, 180,
cert. denied, 464 U. S. 821 (1983)).  But the result in
Kungys could be thought to follow a fortiori from the
quite different cases of Sinclair and Abadi, whereas
nonentitlement under the Sixth Amendment to a jury
determination cannot possibly be thought to follow a
fortiori from Kungys.  In any event, Kungys assuredly
did not involve an adjudication to which the Sixth
Amendment right to jury trial attaches, see Luria v.
United States, 231 U. S. 9 (1913), and hence had no
reason to explore the constitutional ramifications of
Sinclair and Abadi, as we do today.  Whatever support
it gave to the validity of those decisions was obiter dicta,
and may properly be disregarded.

                       *    *    *
  The Constitution gives a criminal defendant the right
to have a jury determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, his
guilt of every element of the crime with which he is
charged.  The trial judge's refusal to allow the jury to
pass on the -materiality- of Gaudin's false statements
infringed that right.  The judgment of the Court of
Appeals is affirmed.
                                     It is so ordered.