Court Opinion

ID: 9429185
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:55.140407+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:17.730340
License: Public Domain

Justice White,
with whom Justice Rehnquist joins, dissenting.
The usual rule is that the alleged vagueness of a criminal statute must be judged in light of the conduct that is charged to be violative of the statute. See, e. g., United States v. Mazurie, 419 U. S. 544, 550 (1975); United States v. Powell, 423 U. S. 87, 92-93 (1975). If the actor is given sufficient notice that his conduct is within the proscription of the statute, his conviction is not vulnerable on vagueness grounds, even if as applied to other conduct, the law would be unconstitutionally vague. None of our cases “suggests that one who has received fair warning of the criminality of his own conduct from the statute in question is nonetheless entitled to *370attack it because the language would not give similar fair warning with respect to other conduct which might be within its broad and literal ambit. One to whose conduct a statute clearly applies may not successfully challenge it for vagueness.” Parker v. Levy, 417 U. S. 733, 756 (1974). The correlative rule is that a criminal statute is not unconstitutionally vague on its face unless it is “impermissibly vague in all of its applications.” Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U. S. 489, 497 (1982).
These general rules are equally applicable to cases where First Amendment or other “fundamental” interests are involved. The Court has held that in such circumstances “more precision in drafting .may be required because of the vagueness doctrine in the case of regulation of expression,” Parker v. Levy, supra, at 756; a “greater degree of specificity” is demanded than in other contexts. Smith v. Goguen, 415 U. S. 566, 573 (1974). But the difference in such cases “relates to how strict a test of vagueness shall be applied in judging a particular criminal statute.” Parker v. Levy, 417 U. S., at 756. It does not permit the challenger of the statute to confuse vagueness and overbreadth by attacking the enactment as being vague as applied to conduct other than his own. See ibid. Of course, if his own actions are themselves protected by the First Amendment or other constitutional provision, or if the statute does not fairly warn that it is proscribed, he may not be convicted. But it would be unavailing for him to claim that although he knew his own conduct was unprotected and was plainly enough forbidden by the statute, others may be in doubt as to whether their acts are banned by the law.
The upshot of our cases, therefore, is that whether or not a statute purports to regulate constitutionally protected conduct, it should not be held unconstitutionally vague on its face unless it is vague in all of its possible applications. If any fool would know that a particular category of conduct would be within the reach of the statute, if there is an unmistakable core that a reasonable person would know is forbidden by the *371law, the enactment is not unconstitutional on its face and should not be vulnerable to a facial attack in a declaratory-judgment action such as is involved in this case. Under our cases, this would be true, even though as applied to other conduct the provision would fail to give the constitutionally required notice of illegality.
Of course, the overbreadth doctrine permits facial challenge of a law that reaches a substantial amount of conduct protected by the First Amendment; and, as I have indicated, I also agree that in First Amendment cases the vagueness analysis may be more demanding. But to imply, as the majority does, ante, at 358-359, n. 8, that the overbreadth doctrine requires facial invalidation of a statute which is not vague as applied to a defendant’s conduct but which is vague as applied to other acts is to confound vagueness and over-breadth, contrary to Parker v. Levy, supra.
If there is a range of conduct that is clearly within the reach of the statute, law enforcement personnel, as well as putative arrestees, are clearly on notice that arrests for such conduct are authorized by the law. There would be nothing arbitrary or discretionary about such arrests. If the officer arrests for an act that both he and the lawbreaker know is clearly barred by the statute, it seems to me an untenable exercise of judicial review to invalidate a state conviction because in some other circumstance the officer may arbitrarily misapply the statute. That the law might not give sufficient guidance to arresting officers with respect to other conduct should be dealt'with in those situations. See, e. g., Hoffman Estates, supra, at 504. It is no basis for fashioning a further brand of “overbreadth” and invalidating the statute on its face, thus forbidding its application to identifiable conduct that is within the State’s power to sanction.
I would agree with the majority in this case if it made at least some sense to conclude that the requirement to provide “credible and reliable identification” after a valid stop on reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct is “impermissibly vague in all of its applications.” Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, *372supra, at 495.* But the statute is not vulnerable on this ground; and the majority, it seems to me, fails to demonstrate that it is. Suppose, for example, an officer requests identification information from a suspect during a valid Terry stop and the suspect answers: “Who I am is just none of your business.” Surely the suspect would know from the statute that a refusal to provide any information at all would constitute a violation. It would be absurd to suggest that in such a situation only the unfettered discretion of a police officer, who has legally stopped a person on reasonable suspicion, would serve to determine whether a violation of the statute has occurred.
“It is self-evident that there is a whole range of conduct that anyone with at least a semblance of common sense would know is [a failure to provide credible and reliable identification] and that would be covered by the statute .... In these instances, there would be ample notice to the actor and no room for undue discretion by enforcement officers. There may be a variety of other conduct that might or might not be claimed [to have failed to meet the statute’s requirements] by the State, but unpredictability in those situations does not change the certainty in others.” Smith v. Goguen, 415 U. S., at 584 (White, J., concurring in judgment).
See id., at 590 (Blackmun, J., joined by Burger, C. J., agreeing with White, J., on the vagueness issue). Thus, even if, as the majority cryptically asserts, the statute here *373implicates First Amendment interests, it is not vague on its face, however more strictly the vagueness doctrine should be applied. The judgment below should therefore not be affirmed but reversed and appellee Lawson remitted to challenging the statute as it has been or will be applied to him.
The majority finds that the statute “contains no standard for determining what a suspect has to do in order to satisfy the requirement to provide a ‘credible and reliable’ identification.” Ante, at 358. At the same time, the majority concedes that “credible and reliable” has been defined by the state court to mean identification that carries reasonable assurance that the identification is authentic and that provides means for later getting in touch with the person. The narrowing construction given this statute by the state court cannot be likened to the “standardless” statutes involved in the cases cited by the majority. For example, Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U. S. 156 (1972), involved a statute that made it a crime to be a “vagrant.” The statute provided:
“‘Rogues and vagabonds, or dissolute persons who go about begging, common gamblers, . . . common drunkards, common night walkers, . . . lewd, wanton and lascivious persons, . . . common railers and brawlers, persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers, . . . shall be deemed vagrants.’” Id., at 156-157, n. 1.
In Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U. S. 130, 132 (1974), the statute at issue made it a crime “ ‘for any person wantonly to curse or revile or to use obscene or opprobrious language toward or with reference to any member of the city police while in the actual performance of his duty.’ ” The present statute, as construed by the state courts, does not fall in the same category.
The statutes in Lewis v. City of New Orleans and Smith v. Goguen, supra, as well as other cases cited by the majority clearly involved threatened infringements of First Amend*374ment freedoms. A stricter test of vagueness was therefore warranted. Here, the majority makes a vague reference to potential suppression of First Amendment liberties, but the precise nature of the liberties threatened is never mentioned. Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 382 U. S. 87 (1965), is cited, but that case dealt with an ordinance making it a crime to “ ‘stand or loiter upon any street or sidewalk . . . after having been requested by any police officer to move on,’” id., at 90, and the First Amendment concerns implicated by the statute were adequately explained by the Court’s reference to Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U. S. 444 (1938), and Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147 (1939), which dealt with the First Amendment right to distribute leaflets on city streets and sidewalks. There are no such concerns in the present case.
Of course, if the statute on its face violates the Fourth or Fifth Amendment — and I express no views about that question — the Court would be justified in striking it down. But the majority apparently cannot bring itself to take this course. It resorts instead to the vagueness doctrine to invalidate a statute that is clear in many of its applications but which is somehow distasteful to the majority. As here construed and applied, the doctrine serves as an open-ended authority to oversee the States’ legislative choices in the criminal law area and in this case leaves the State in a quandary as to how to draft a statute that will pass constitutional muster.
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 The majority attempts to underplay the conflict between its decision today and the decision last Term in Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., by suggesting that we applied a “less strict vagueness test” because economic regulations were at issue. The Court there also found that the ordinances challenged might be characterized as quasi-criminal or criminal in nature and held that because at least some of respondent’s conduct clearly was covered by the ordinance, the facial challenge was unavailing even under the “relatively strict test” applicable to criminal laws. 455. U. S., at 499-500.