Hello, Conrad. Overall great post. It is a positive thing that ex post facto laws exist because they balance the United States Constitution with criminal law. For instance, the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects an individual from double jeopardy. If a person could commit a crime, be punished for his or her offense, then retried, there would very little balance and trust in the law. On the other hand, if a person committed harsh crimes and he or she was pardoned of their crimes dues to the law changing, then that would be a downside of ex post facto laws. “Retroactivity is often accepted precisely when the law is faced with questions of resiliency and adaptive capacity” (Hornstein, 2011). This