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12 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

legislation.”  Id., at 693 (emphasis deleted). 

Justice  Brewer—widely  recognized  as  “a 

leading
spokesman for ‘substantized’ due process,” Gamer, Justice
Brewer  and  Substantive  Due  Process:  A  Conservative 
Court  Revisited,  18  Vand.  L. Rev.  615,  627  (1965)—
employed similar reasoning while riding circuit, though he
did  not  identify  the  constitutional  source  of  judicial  au-
thority  to  nullify  vague  laws.  In  reviewing  an  Iowa  law 
authorizing fines against railroads for charging more than
a “reasonable and just” rate, Justice Brewer mentioned in 
dictum  that  “no  penal  law  can  be  sustained  unless  its 
mandates  are  so  clearly  expressed  that  any  ordinary 
person  can  determine  in  advance  what  he  may  and  what
he  may  not  do  under  it.”  Chicago  &  N. W.  R.  Co.  v.  Dey, 
35 F. 866, 876 (CC SD Iowa 1888).

Constitutional  vagueness  challenges  in  this  Court  ini-
tially  met  with  some  resistance.  Although  the  Court
appeared to acknowledge the possibility of unconstitution-
ally  indefinite  enactments,  it  repeatedly  rejected  vague-
ness  challenges  to  penal  laws  addressing  railroad  rates, 
Railroad  Comm’n  Cases,  116  U. S.  307,  336–337  (1886), 
liquor  sales,  Ohio  ex rel.  Lloyd  v.  Dollison,  194  U. S.  445, 
450–451  (1904),  and  anticompetitive  conduct,  Nash  v. 
United  States,  229  U. S.  373,  376–378  (1913);  Waters-
Pierce  Oil  Co.  v.  Texas  (No.  1),  212  U. S.  86,  108–111 
(1909).

In  1914,  however,  the  Court  nullified  a  law  on  vague-
ness  grounds  under  the  Due  Process  Clause  for  the  first 
time.  In  International  Harvester  Co.  of  America  v.  Ken-
tucky,  234  U. S.  216  (1914),  a  tobacco  company  brought  a 
Fourteenth  Amendment  challenge  against  several  Ken-
tucky  antitrust  laws  that  had  been  construed  to  render
unlawful  “any  combination  [made]  . . .  for  the  purpose  or 
with  the  effect  of  fixing  a  price  that  was  greater  or  less 
than  the  real  value  of  the  article,”  id.,  at  221.    The  com-
pany argued that by referring to “real value,” the laws pro-