void for vagueness

…delegations. Before 1940, the Court decided only a handful of vagueness challenges to federal statutes. Since then, the phrase "void for vagueness" has appeared in our cases well over 100 times. Nor have we abandoned enforcing other sides of the separation-of-powers triangle between the legislative, executive, and judiciary. We have…

…to regulate the content of a newspaper in violation of the First Amendment. Alternatively, it is urged that the statute is void for vagueness since no editor could know exactly what words would call the statute into operation. It is also contended that the statute fails to distinguish between critical comment which is and which…

…vagrancy laws. In Papachristou v. Jacksonville , 405 U. S. 156 (1972), the Court held that a traditional vagrancy law was void for vagueness. Its broad scope and imprecise terms denied proper notice to potential offenders and permitted police officers to exercise unfettered discretion in the enforcement of the law. See id. , at…

…U. S. 160, 174. The conditions which spawned these laws may be gone, but the archaic classifications remain. This ordinance is void for vagueness, both in the sense that it “fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute,” United States v. Harriss , 347 U. S.…