Professor Joel Johnson Files Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Case City of Grants Pass v. Gloria Johnson

Professor Joel S. Johnson has filed an amicus brief in Supreme Court case City of Grants Pass v. Gloria Johnson.  The brief is on behalf of Professor Peter Low of the University of Virginia School of Law and Professor Johnson. The brief draws on their article, "Changing the Vocabulary of the Vagueness Doctrine," 101 Va. L. Rev. 2051 (2015) (SSRN). The pending Supreme Court case concerns the constitutionality of a law restricting camping on public property. 

Summary of Argument

In resolving the question presented in this case, this Court should affirm the constitutional requirement that all crime must be based on conduct. But in doing so, the Court should clarify that the conduct requirement—a limit on state power to define the rules of criminal liability—is properly rooted as a principle of due process, rather than one of cruel and unusual punishment. The conduct requirement is a sound and important constitutional limitation on legislative crime creation, but it has always been a poor fit for cruel-and-unusual-punishment doctrine, which is otherwise focused on methods and proportionality of punishment. The requirement is more defensible as a due process principle that undergirds this Court’s void-for-vagueness doctrine.

The complete amicus brief may be found at Grants Pass v.  Johnson