Opinion of the Court
public officials.” 688 F. 2d, at 113.
A divided Second Circuit panel agreed. The majority found that “there is no precise litmus paper test” for determining when a private person “owes a fiduciary duty to the general citizenry” but that “two time-tested measures of fiduciary status [were] helpful.” Id., at 122. These were (1) whether “others rel[ied] upon [the accused] because of [his] special relationship in the government” and (2) whether he exercised “de facto control” over “governmental decisions.” Ibid. Admitting that the case before it was “novel” and that determining when a private person owes a duty of honest services was “a most difficult enterprise,” the majority nevertheless concluded that a private person could commit honest-services fraud if he or she “dominate[d] government.” Id., at 121–122. In a strongly worded partial dissent, Judge Winter complained that the majority’s interpretation lacked “the slightest basis in Congressional intent, statutory language or common canons of statutory interpretation” and that it erroneously treated a variety of “politically active persons” who have informal but strong influence over government as subject to the same duties as officeholders. Id., at 142 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part).
This Court declined to review the Second Circuit’s decision, 461 U. S. 913 (1983), but that decision’s life as Second Circuit precedent was short-lived. In McNally v. United States, 483 U. S. 350 (1987), the Court considered a similar case, and rather than addressing the application of honest-services fraud to private persons, the Court rejected the entire concept of honest-services fraud and held that the mail fraud statute was “limited in scope to the protection of property rights.” Id., at 358, 360.
McNally’s holding on honest-services fraud, however, lasted for less time than Margiotta’s. “Congress responded swiftly” and enacted 18 U. S. C. §1346, which provides that
