Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7120_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

9 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

Vague  statutes  surfaced  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  as 
well.  Shortly after the First Congress proposed the Bill of 
Rights, for instance, it passed a law providing “[t]hat every 
person who shall attempt to trade with the Indian tribes,
or  be  found  in  the  Indian  country  with  such  merchandise 
in  his  possession  as  are  usually  vended  to  the  Indians, 
without a license,” must forfeit the offending goods.  Act of 
July 22, 1790, ch. 33, §3, 1 Stat. 137–138.  At first glance,
punishing  the  unlicensed  possession  of  “merchandise  . . . 
usually vended to the Indians,” ibid., would seem far more 
likely  to  “invit[e]  arbitrary  enforcement,”  ante,  at  5,  than 
does the residual clause. 

But rather than strike down arguably vague laws under 
the  Fifth  Amendment  Due  Process  Clause,  antebellum 
American courts—like their English predecessors—simply 
refused  to  apply  them  in  individual  cases  under  the  rule 
that penal statutes should be construed strictly.  See, e.g., 
United  States  v.  Sharp,  27  F. Cas.  1041  (No.  16,264)  (CC
Pa. 1815) (Washington, J.).  In Sharp, for instance, several 
defendants  charged  with  violating  an  Act  rendering  it  a 
capital  offense  for  “any  seaman”  to  “make  a  revolt  in  [a]
ship,”  Act  of  Apr.  30,  1790,  §8,  1  Stat.  114,  objected  that
“the  offence  of  making  a  revolt,  [wa]s  not  sufficiently
defined  by  this  law,  or  by  any  other  standard,  to  which
reference  could  be  safely  made;  to  warrant  the  court  in
passing  a  sentence  upon  [them].”    27  F. Cas.,  at  1043. 
Justice  Washington,  riding  circuit,  apparently  agreed,
observing  that  the  common  definitions  for  the  phrase
“make  a  revolt”  were  “so  multifarious,  and  so  different” 
that  he  could  not  “avoid  feeling  a  natural  repugnance,  to
selecting from this mass of definitions, one, which may fix 
a crime upon these men, and that too of a capital nature.” 
Ibid.  Remarking  that  “[l]aws  which  create  crimes,  ought 
to  be  so  explicit  in  themselves,  or  by  reference  to  some 
other  standard,  that  all  men,  subject  to  their  penalties, 
may know  what acts it is their duty to avoid,” he refused