Fair warning and the retroactive judicial expansion of federal criminal statutes

Southern California Law Review

Volumn 74, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 455-

  Morrison, Trevor W ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0042838036     PISSN: 00383910     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (4)

1. U.S. CONST. amends. V ("No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."), XIV, § 1 ("No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."). See United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 265 (1997) (describing the fair warning requirement as an "application of [the Due Process Clause's] spacious protection of liberty").
2. Lanier, 520 U.S. at 265 (quoting McBoyle v. United States, 283 U.S. 25, 27 (1931)).
3. Id. at 266.
4. The void-for-vagueness doctrine requires the invalidation of statutes containing language "so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application." Id. (quoting Connally v. Gen. Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926)). The rule of lenity "ensures fair warning by so resolving ambiguity in a criminal statute as to apply it only to conduct clearly covered." Id.