4. Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine

Question 1

Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine

Answer 1

• Statutes must give adequate notice of what is prohibited (due process)
• Conduct (that is specified in advance by the legislature) to be sufficiently precise
• Court is concerned with notice to the police, gives police meaningful standards

Question 2

Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (SCOTUS 1972)

Answer 2

• Ds stopped in used car lot that had been broken into before, charged with prowling by auto in violation of the vagrancy ordinance
• Ordinance punished things like status rather than conduct (like habitual loafers, people relying on wages of wives)
• Said the statute was void vagueness for failing to give person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that contemplated conduct is forbidden and because it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions (the net cast by the statute is large enough to catch a lot of people and can encompass everyday behavior)

Question 3

*Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham

Answer 3

group was standing in front of a department store, didn’t move, arrested for loitering, void - based on whim of police officer in city and doesn’t clearly define rules

Indecency statutes are routinely held up despite being vague (because they do have a core meaning and don’t create problems with the police or what ordinary people would think)

Laws that regulate free speech (1st amendment generally) are required to have lots of precision