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14 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

for  vagueness.  In  James,  however,  the  Court  stated  in  a 
footnote  that  it  was  “not  persuaded  by  [the  principal  dis­
sent’s] suggestion . . . that the residual provision is uncon­
stitutionally vague.”  550 U. S., at 210, n. 6.  In Sykes, the 
Court  again  rejected  a  dissenting  opinion’s  claim  of 
vagueness.  564 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 13–14). 

The doctrine of stare decisis allows us to revisit an ear­
lier decision where experience with its application reveals 
that it is unworkable.  Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 
827  (1991).  Experience  is  all  the  more  instructive  when
the  decision  in  question  rejected  a  claim  of  unconstitu­
tional vagueness.  Unlike other judicial mistakes that need 
correction,  the  error  of  having  rejected  a  vagueness  chal­
lenge  manifests  itself  precisely  in  subsequent  judicial
decisions:  the  inability  of  later  opinions  to  impart  the 
predictability  that  the  earlier  opinion  forecast.    Here,  the 
experience of the federal courts leaves no doubt about the 
unavoidable uncertainty and arbitrariness of adjudication
under the residual clause.  Even after Sykes tried to clarify
the  residual  clause’s  meaning,  the  provision  remains  a
“judicial  morass  that  defies  systemic  solution,”  “a  black 
hole  of  confusion  and  uncertainty”  that  frustrates  any 
effort to impart “some sense of order and direction.”  United 
States  v.  Vann,  660  F. 3d  771,  787  (CA4  2011)  (Agee,  J., 
concurring).

This  Court’s  cases  make  plain  that  even  decisions  ren­
dered after full adversarial presentation may have to yield
to the lessons of subsequent experience.  See, e.g., United 
States  v.  Dixon,  509  U. S.  688,  711  (1993);  Payne,  501 
U. S.,  at  828–830  (1991).    But  James  and  Sykes  opined
about vagueness without full briefing or argument on that 
issue—a  circumstance  that  leaves  us  “less  constrained  to 
follow  precedent,”  Hohn  v.  United  States,  524  U. S.  236, 
251  (1998).  The  brief  discussions  of  vagueness  in  James 
and  Sykes  homed  in  on  the  imprecision  of  the  phrase
“serious  potential  risk”;  neither  opinion  evaluated  the