Vagueness Doctrine

In the landmark 1976 decision Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court created two broad categories of political advertising: issue advocacy and express advocacy. The Court determined what counted as express advocacy through a few key words: “vote for”, “elect”, “support”, “cast your ballot for”, “_____ for Congress”, “vote against”, “defeat", and "reject”. There are very obvious loopholes with this definition, but the Court may have simply been trying to come up with a strict definition.

The vagueness doctrine stems from the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and courts have generally determined that vague laws violate due process. Laws need to explicitly state what it mandates, what is enforceable, and potentially vague terms need to be defined. This helps prevent arbitrary enforcement of the laws. Laws are usually found void for vagueness if, after setting some requirement or punishment, the law does not specify what is required or what conduct is punishable. Going back to the Supreme Court’s definitions for political advertising, if they did not list specific characteristics (in this case word usage), the law may be abused.

To provide another example, in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. (2012) the Supreme Court ruled against the Federal Communications Commission based off of the vagueness doctrine. The FCC’s scheme for regulating speech was unconstitutionally vague. Since the words "obscene," "vulgar," "profane," and "indecent," were not explicitly defined, they cannot enforce restrictions against "obscene," "vulgar," "profane," or "indecent" content since people may have different perceptions of things that are “obscene”, “vulgar”, “profane”, or “indecent”.

While the vagueness doctrine protects Constitutional rights, it may also weaken the effectiveness of the law and create loopholes.

Sources:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/void_for_vagueness
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/section-1/clarity-in-criminal-statutes-the-void-for-vagueness-doctrine
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/07-582