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Criminal Constitutional Avoidance, William W. Berry Iii

William W Berry III

Just two terms ago in United States v. Skilling, the Supreme Court used the avoidance canon in response to a void-for-vagueness challenge to the federal criminal fraud statute. As explained below, the Court severely restricted the statute’s meaning, limiting its proscription against “deprivation of honest services” to bribery and kickbacks.

This article argues that, contrary to the Court’s decision in Skilling, the canon of constitutional avoidance is inappropriate in void-for-vagueness cases. This is because such cases do not present a statutory ambiguity that requires choosing between competing meanings or interpretations. Instead, void-for-vagueness challenges concern statutes that either have …