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8 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

The  notion that  such  laws  may  be  void  under  the  Consti-
tution’s  Due  Process  Clauses,  however,  is  a  more  recent 
development.

Before  the  end  of  the  19th  century,  courts  addressed 
vagueness  through  a  rule  of  strict  construction  of  penal 
statutes,  not  a  rule  of  constitutional  law.    This  rule  of 
construction—better  known  today  as  the  rule  of  lenity—
first  emerged  in  16th-century  England  in  reaction  to
Parliament’s  practice  of  making  large  swaths  of  crimes 
capital  offenses,  though  it  did  not  gain  broad  acceptance 
until  the  following  century.    See  Hall,  Strict  or  Liberal 
Construction of Penal Statutes, 48 Harv. L. Rev. 748, 749– 
751 (1935); see also 1 L. Radzinowicz, A History of English 
Criminal Law and Its Administration From 1750, pp. 10–
11  (1948)  (noting  that  some  of  the  following  crimes  trig-
gered  the  death  penalty:  “marking  the  edges  of  any 
current coin of the kingdom,” “maliciously cutting any hop-
binds  growing  on  poles  in  any  plantation  of  hops,”  and 
“being  in  the  company  of  gypsies”).    Courts  relied  on  this 
rule  of  construction  in  refusing  to  apply  vague  capital-
offense statutes to prosecutions before them.  As an exam-
ple  of  this  rule,  William  Blackstone  described  a  notable
instance  in  which  an  English  statute  imposing  the  death 
penalty  on  anyone  convicted  of  “stealing  sheep,  or  other 
cattle”  was “held to extend to nothing but mere sheep” as
“th[e]  general  words,  ‘or  other  cattle,’  [were]  looked  upon
as much too loose to create a capital offence.”  1 Commen-
taries on the Laws of England 88 (1765).2 

—————— 

2 At the time, the ordinary meaning of the word “cattle” was not lim-
ited to cows, but instead encompassed all “[b]easts of pasture; not wild 
nor  domestick.”    1  S.  Johnson,  A  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language 
(4th  ed.  1773).    Parliament  responded  to  the  judicial  refusal  to  apply
the  provision  to  “cattle”  by  passing  “another  statute,  15  Geo.  II.  c.  34,
extending the [law] to bulls, cows, oxen, steers, bullocks, heifers, calves,
and  lambs,  by  name.”    1  Blackstone,  Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of 
England, at 88.