Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7120_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 31

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

13 

THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment 

vided “no standard of conduct that it is possible to know.” 
Ibid.  The Court agreed.  Id., at 223–224.  Although it did
not  specify  in  that  case  which  portion  of  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  served  as  the  basis  for  its  holding,  ibid.,  it 
explained  in  a  related  case  that  the  lack  of  a  knowable 
standard of conduct in the Kentucky statutes “violated the 
fundamental principles of justice embraced in the concep-
tion of due process of law.”  Collins v. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 
634, 638 (1914). 

3 

Since that time, the Court’s application of its vagueness 
doctrine has largely mirrored its application of substantive
due process.  During the Lochner era, a period marked by
the use of substantive due process to strike down economic 
regulations,  e.g.,  Lochner  v.  New  York,  198  U. S.  45,  57 
(1905),  the  Court  frequently  used  the  vagueness  doctrine 
to  invalidate  economic  regulations  penalizing  commercial 
activity.4  Among the penal laws it found to be impermis-
sibly  vague  were  a  state  law  regulating  the  production  of 
crude  oil,  Champlin  Refining  Co.  v.  Corporation  Comm’n 

—————— 

4 During this time, the Court would apply its new vagueness doctrine
outside  of  the  penal  context  as  well.    In  A.  B.  Small  Co.  v.  American 
Sugar  Refining  Co.,  267  U. S.  233  (1925),  a  sugar  dealer  raised  a 
defense to a breach-of-contract suit that the contracts themselves were 
unlawful  under  several  provisions  of  the  Lever  Act,  including  one 
making  it  “ ‘unlawful  for  any  person  . . .  to  make  any  unjust  or  unrea-
sonable . . . charge in . . . dealing in or with any necessaries,’ or to agree 
with another ‘to exact excessive prices for any necessaries,’ ” id., at 238. 
Applying  United  States  v.  L.  Cohen  Grocery  Co.,  255  U. S.  81  (1921),
which had held that provision to be unconstitutionally vague, the Court
rejected  the  dealer’s  argument.    267  U. S.,  at  238–239.    The  Court 
explained that “[i]t was not the criminal penalty that was held invalid,
but the exaction of obedience to a rule or standard which was so vague
and  indefinite  as  really  to  be  no  rule  or  standard  at  all.”    Id.,  at  239. 
That doctrine thus applied to penalties as well as “[a]ny other means of 
exaction,  such  as  declaring  the  transaction  unlawful  or  stripping  a
participant of his rights under it.”  Ibid.