Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

Cite as:  559 U. S. ____ (2010) 

3 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

a  party  to  whom  the  law  may  constitutionally  be  applied 
to challenge the statute on the ground that it violates the 
First  Amendment  rights  of  others.    See,  e.g.,  Board  of 
Trustees of State Univ. of N. Y. v. Fox, 492 U. S. 469, 483 
(1989)  (“Ordinarily,  the  principal  advantage  of  the  over-
breadth  doctrine  for  a  litigant  is  that  it  enables  him  to 
benefit from the statute’s unlawful application to someone 
else”); see also Ohralik  v. Ohio State  Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 
447,  462,  n. 20  (1978)  (describing  the  doctrine  as  one
“under  which  a  person  may  challenge  a  statute  that  in-
fringes  protected  speech  even  if  the  statute  constitution-
ally might be applied to him”).

The  “strong  medicine”  of  overbreadth  invalidation  need
not  and  generally  should  not  be  administered  when  the 
statute  under  attack  is  unconstitutional  as applied  to  the 
challenger  before  the  court.    As  we  said  in  Fox,  supra,  at 
484–485, “[i]t is not the usual judicial practice, . . . nor do 
we  consider  it  generally  desirable,  to  proceed  to  an  over-
breadth  issue  unnecessarily—that  is,  before  it  is  deter-
mined that the statute would be valid as applied.”  Accord, 
New  York  State  Club  Assn.,  Inc.  v.  City  of  New  York,  487 
U. S.  1,  11  (1988);  see  also  Broadrick,  supra,  at  613; 
United Reporting Publishing Corp., supra, at 45 (STEVENS, 
J., dissenting).

I  see  no  reason  to  depart  here  from  the  generally  pre-
ferred  procedure  of  considering  the  question  of  over-
breadth  only  as  a  last  resort.2  Because  the  Court  has 
addressed  the  overbreadth  question,  however,  I  will  ex-
plain  why  I  do  not  think  that  the  record  supports  the 
conclusion  that  §48,  when  properly  interpreted,  is  overly 
broad. 

—————— 

2 For the reasons set forth below, this is not a case in which the chal-
lenged statute is unconstitutional in all or almost all of its applications.