Unconstitutional vagueness is a concept that is used to strike down certain laws and judicial actions in United States federal courts. It is derived from the due process

Due process

Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...

 doctrine found in the Fifth

Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, protects against abuse of government authority in a legal procedure. Its guarantees stem from English common law which traces back to the Magna Carta in 1215...

 and Fourteenth Amendments

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...

 to the United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

. No one must risk criminal prosecution merely because he or she cannot reasonably understand what conduct is prohibited under the law.

Examples

• The Florida Supreme Court
  Florida Supreme Court
  The Supreme Court of the State of Florida is the highest court in the U.S. state of Florida. The Supreme Court consists of seven judges: the Chief Justice and six Justices who are appointed by the Governor to 6-year terms and remain in office if retained in a general election near the end of each...
  
  , in Franklin v. State
  Franklin v. State
  Franklin v. State, 257 So.2d 21 , was a case in which the Florida Supreme Court struck down Florida's sodomy law as being "unconstitutional for vagueness and uncertainty in its language, violating constitutional due process to the defendants." The court retained the state's prohibition on sodomy...
  
  , ruled that the state's felony ban on sodomy was unconstitutionally vague because an "average person of common intelligence" could not reasonably know, without speculating, whether "abominable and detestable crime against nature" included oral sex or only anal sex.
• Papachristou v. Jacksonville
  Papachristou v. Jacksonville
  Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 , was a United States Supreme Court case resulting in a Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance being declared unconstitutionally vague. The case was argued on December 8, 1971 and decided on February 24, 1972...
  
  and Kolender v. Lawson
  Kolender v. Lawson
  Kolender v. Lawson, , is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of laws that allow police to demand that “loiterers” and “wanderers” provide identification.- Facts :...
  
  were two Supreme Court
  Supreme Court of the United States
  The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
  
   cases where the court struck down laws against vagrancy for unconstitutional vagueness; in restricting activities like "loafing," "strolling," or "wandering around from place to place," the law gave arbitrary power to the police and, since people could not reasonably know what sort of conduct is forbidden under the law, could potentially criminalize innocuous everyday activities.
• The U.S. Supreme Court, in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health
  City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health
  City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. 416 , was a case in which the United States Supreme Court affirmed its abortion rights jurisprudence...
  
  , struck down a provision of Akron's abortion law which required that physicians dispose of fetal remains in a "humane and sanitary manner." "Humane" was judged to be unconstitutionally vague as a "definition of conduct subject to criminal prosecution"; the physician could not be certain whether or not his conduct was legal.
• The Mandatory Victim Restitution Act has been ruled to be so imprecise as to be unconstitutional as applied to certain defendants.
• The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
  United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
  The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts for the following districts:* District of Delaware* District of New Jersey...
  
   ruled that a supervised release condition prohibiting a defendant from possessing "all forms of pornography, including legal adult pornography" was unconstitutionally vague because it posed a real danger that the prohibition on pornography might ultimately translate to a prohibition on whatever the officer personally found titillating.

See also

• Constitutionalism
  Constitutionalism
  Constitutionalism has a variety of meanings. Most generally, it is "a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law"....
  
  
• Constitutional economics
  Constitutional economics
  Constitutional economics is a research program in economics and constitutionalism that has been described as extending beyond the definition of 'the economic analysis of constitutional law' in explaining the choice "of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain the...
  
  
• Rule according to higher law
  Rule according to higher law
  The rule according to a higher law means that no written law may be enforced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principles of fairness, morality, and justice...