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4 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

(1983).  The prohibition of vagueness in criminal statutes
“is  a  well-recognized  requirement,  consonant  alike  with
ordinary notions of fair play and the settled rules of law,” 
and  a  statute  that  flouts  it  “violates  the  first  essential  of 
due  process.”  Connally  v.  General  Constr.  Co.,  269  U. S. 
385,  391  (1926).  These  principles  apply  not  only  to  stat­
utes  defining  elements  of  crimes,  but  also  to  statutes 
fixing  sentences.  United  States  v.  Batchelder,  442  U. S. 
114, 123 (1979).

In  Taylor  v.  United  States,  495  U. S.  575,  600  (1990),
this  Court  held  that  the  Armed  Career  Criminal  Act  re­
quires courts to use a framework known as the categorical 
approach  when  deciding  whether  an  offense  “is  burglary, 
arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise
involves  conduct  that  presents  a  serious  potential  risk  of 
physical  injury  to  another.”  Under  the  categorical  ap­
proach,  a  court  assesses  whether  a  crime  qualifies  as  a 
violent felony “in terms of how the law defines the offense 
and not in terms of how an individual offender might have
committed  it  on  a  particular  occasion.”    Begay,  supra,  at 
141. 

Deciding  whether  the  residual  clause  covers  a  crime
thus  requires  a  court  to  picture  the  kind  of  conduct  that
the  crime  involves  in  “the  ordinary  case,”  and  to  judge 
whether that abstraction presents a serious potential risk 
of physical injury.  James, supra, at 208.  The court’s task 
goes  beyond  deciding  whether  creation  of  risk  is  an  ele­
ment of the crime.  That is so because, unlike the part  of
the  definition  of  a  violent  felony  that  asks  whether  the 
crime “has as an element the use . . . of physical force,” the 
residual clause asks whether the crime “involves conduct” 
that  presents  too  much  risk  of  physical  injury.    What  is 
more,  the  inclusion  of  burglary  and  extortion  among  the
enumerated  offenses  preceding  the  residual  clause  con­
firms that the court’s task also goes beyond evaluating the 
chances that the physical acts that make up the crime will