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2 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

of crimes falling within certain categories, and not to the facts under-
lying  the  prior  convictions.”  Taylor  v.  United  States,  495  U. S.  575, 
600.   Deciding  whether  the  residual  clause  covers  a  crime  thus  re-
quires a court to picture the kind of conduct that the crime involves
in  “the  ordinary  case,”  and  to  judge  whether  that  abstraction  pre-
sents  a  serious  potential  risk  of  physical  injury.    James,  supra,  at 
208.  Pp. 3–5.

(b) Two  features  of  the  residual  clause  conspire  to  make  it  uncon-
stitutionally vague.  By tying the judicial assessment of risk to a judi-
cially  imagined  “ordinary  case”  of  a  crime  rather  than  to  real-world
facts or statutory elements, the clause leaves grave uncertainty about
how to estimate the risk posed by a crime.  See James, supra, at 211. 
At  the  same  time,  the  residual  clause  leaves  uncertainty  about  how 
much  risk  it  takes  for  a  crime  to  qualify  as  a  violent  felony.    Taken 
together, these uncertainties produce more unpredictability and arbi-
trariness  than  the  Due  Process  Clause  tolerates.   This  Court’s  re-
peated failure to craft a principled standard out of the residual clause 
and the lower courts’ persistent inability to apply the clause in a con-
sistent way confirm its hopeless indeterminacy.  Pp. 5–10.

(c) This Court’s cases squarely contradict the theory that the resid-
ual  clause  is  constitutional  merely  because  some  underlying  crimes 
may clearly pose a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.  
See,  e.g.,  United  States  v.  L.  Cohen  Grocery  Co.,  255  U. S.  81,  89. 
Holding  the  residual  clause  void  for  vagueness  does  not  put  other 
criminal laws that use terms such as “substantial risk” in doubt, be-
cause  those  laws  generally  require  gauging  the  riskiness  of  an  indi-
vidual’s conduct on a particular occasion, not the riskiness of an ide-
alized ordinary case of the crime.  Pp. 10–13.

(d) The  doctrine  of  stare  decisis  does  not  require  continued  adher-
ence to James and Sykes.  Experience leaves no doubt about the una-
voidable  uncertainty  and  arbitrariness  of  adjudication  under  the  re-
sidual clause.  James and Sykes opined about vagueness without full
briefing  or  argument.    And  continued  adherence  to  those  decisions 
would undermine, rather than promote, the goals of evenhandedness,
predictability, and consistency served by stare decisis.  Pp. 13–15. 

526 Fed. Appx. 708, reversed and remanded. 

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., 
and GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.  KENNEDY, 
J., and THOMAS, J., filed opinions concurring in the judgment.  ALITO, J., 
filed a dissenting opinion.