Specificity of criminal law
CONNALLY v. GENERAL CONST. CO., 269 U.S. 385 (1926): The dividing line between what is lawful and unlawful cannot be left to conjecture
This is a suit to enjoin certain state and county officers of Oklahoma from enforcing the provisions of section 7255 and section 7257, Compiled Oklahoma Statutes 1921, challenged as unconstitutional. Section 7255 creates an eight-hour day for all persons employed by or on behalf of the state, etc., and provides:
'That not less than the current rate of per diem wages in the locality where the work is performed shall be paid to laborers, workmen, mechanics, prison guards, janitors in public institutions, or other persons so employed by or on behalf of the state, … and laborers, workmen, mechanics, or other persons employed by contractors or subcontractors in the execution of any contract or contracts with the state, … shall be deemed to be employed by or on behalf of the state. …'
United States v. Capital Traction Co., 34 App. D. C. 592, 19 Ann. Cas. 68, where a statute making it an offense for any street railway company to run an insufficient number of cars to accommodate passengers 'without crowding' was held to be void for uncertainty. In the course of its opinion, that court said (pages 596, 598):
'The statute makes it a criminal offense for the street railway companies in the District of Columbia to run an insufficient number of cars to accommodate persons desiring passage thereon, without crowding the same. What shall be the guide to the court or jury in ascertaining what constitutes a crowded car? What may be regarded as a crowded car by one jury may not be so considered by another. What shall constitute a sufficient number of cars in the opinion of one judge may be regarded as insufficient by another. … There is a total absence of any definition of what shall constitute a crowded car. This important element cannot be left to conjecture, or be supplied by either the court or the jury. It is of the very essence of the law itself, and without it the statute is too indefinite and uncertain to support an information or indictment.
[269 U.S. 385, 393] … The dividing line between what is lawful and unlawful cannot be left to conjecture. The citizen cannot be held to answer charges based upon penal statutes whose mandates are so uncertain that they will reasonably admit of different constructions. A criminal statute cannot rest upon an uncertain foundation. The crime, and the elements constituting it, must be so clearly expressed that the ordinary person can intelligently choose, in advance, what course it is lawful for him to pursue. Penal statutes prohibiting the doing of certain things, and providing a punishment for their violation, should not admit of such a double meaning that the citizen may act upon the one conception of its requirements and the courts upon another.'