Supreme Court Opinions Dwight Allen

Judicial interpretation is the way in which the judiciary construes the law, particularly constitutional documents, legislation and frequently used vocabulary. This is an important issue in some common law jurisdictions such as the United States, Australia and Canada, because the supreme courts of those nations can overturn laws made by their legislatures via a process called judicial review.

For example, the United States Supreme Court has decided such topics as the legality of slavery as in the Dred Scott decision, and desegregation as in the Brown v Board of Education decision, and abortion rights as in the Roe v Wade decision. As a result, how justices interpret the constitution, and the ways in which they approach this task has a political aspect. Terms describing types of judicial interpretation can be ambiguous; for example, the term judicial conservatism can vary in meaning depending on what is trying to be "conserved". One can look at judicial interpretation along a continuum from judicial restraint to judicial activism, with different viewpoints along the continuum.

Phrases which are regularly used, for example in standard contract documents, may attract judicial interpretation applicable within a particular jurisdiction whenever the same words are used in the same context.

In the United States, there are different methods to perform judicial interpretation:

Balancing happens when judges weigh one set of interests or rights against an opposing set, typically used to make rulings in First Amendment cases. For example, cases involving freedom of speech sometimes require justices to make a distinction between legally permissible speech and speech that can be restricted or banned for, say, reasons of safety, and the task then is for justices to balance these conflicting claims. The balancing approach was criticized by Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter who argued that the Constitution gives no guidance about how to weigh or measure divergent interests.

Doctrinalism considers how various parts of the Constitution have been "shaped by the Court's own jurisprudence", according to Finn.

In American constitutional law, a statute is void for vagueness and unenforceable if it is too vague for the average citizen to understand, and a constitutionally-protected interest cannot tolerate permissible activity to be chilled within the range of the vagueness (either because the statute is a penal statute with criminal or quasi-criminal civil penalties, or because the interest invaded by the vague law is a strict scrutiny constitutional right). There are several reasons a statute may be considered vague; in general, a statute might be void for vagueness when an average citizen cannot generally determine what persons are regulated, what conduct is prohibited, or what punishment may be imposed. For example, criminal laws which do not state explicitly and definitely what conduct is punishable are void for vagueness. A statute is also void for vagueness if a legislature's delegation of authority to judges and/or administrators is so extensive that it would lead to arbitrary prosecutions. Related to the "void for vagueness" concept is the "unconstitutional vagueness" concept. A law can be "void for vagueness" if it imposes on First Amendment freedom of speech, assembly, or religion.

The "void for vagueness" doctrine applies only to criminal or penal laws (or quasi-criminal laws, for example laws that carry civil penalties), and laws that potentially limit "strict scrutiny" constitutional rights. The doctrine does not apply to private law (that is, laws that govern rights and obligations as between private parties), only to laws that govern rights and obligations vis-a-vis the government. The doctrine also requires that to qualify as constitutional, a law must:

State explicitly what it mandates, and what is enforceable.

Define potentially vague terms.

Roots and purpose.

In the case of vagueness, a statute might be considered void on constitutional grounds. Specifically, roots of the vagueness doctrine extend into the two due process clauses, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The courts have generally determined that vague laws deprive citizens of their rights without fair process, thus violating due process.

The following pronouncement of the void for vagueness doctrine was made by Justice Sutherland in Connally v General Construction Company (1926):

he terms of a penal statute must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law.

The void for vagueness doctrine is a constitutional rule. This rule requires that laws are so written that they explicitly and definitely state what conduct is punishable. The vagueness doctrine thus serves two purposes. First: All persons receive a fair notice of what is punishable and what is not. Second: The vagueness doctrine helps prevent arbitrary enforcement of the laws and arbitrary prosecutions. There is however no limit to the conduct that can be criminalized, when the legislature does not set minimum guidelines to govern law enforcement.

Overseas and nonresident citizens.

U.S. citizens residing overseas who would otherwise have the right to vote are guaranteed the right to vote in federal elections by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986. As a practical matter, individual states implement UOCAVA.

A citizen who has never resided in the United States can vote if a parent is eligible to vote in certain states. In some of these states the citizen can vote in local, state, and federal elections, in others in federal elections only.

Voting rights of U.S. citizens who have never established residence in the U.S. vary by state and may be impacted by the residence history of their parents.

U.S. territories.

U.S. citizens and non-citizen nationals who reside in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, or the United States Virgin Islands are not allowed to vote in U.S. national and presidential elections, as these U.S. territories belong to the United States but do not have presidential electors. The U.S. Constitution requires a voter to be resident in one of the 50 states or in the District of Columbia to vote in federal elections. To say that the Constitution does not require extension of federal voting rights to U.S. territories residents does not, however, exclude the possibility that the Constitution may permit their enfranchisement under another source of law. Statehood or a constitutional amendment would allow people in the U.S. territories to vote in federal elections.

Like the District of Columbia, territories of the United States do not have U.S. senators representing them in the senate, and they each have one member of the House of Representatives who is not allowed to vote.

These voting restrictions have been challenged in a series of lawsuits in the 21st century. In 2015, residents of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands joined as plaintiffs in Segovia v Board of Election Commissioners (2016). The participants had all formerly lived in Illinois, but because of a change of residency to an unincorporated territory were no longer able to vote. Their claim was that the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, as it is implemented, violates the Equal Protection Clause. At issue was that Illinois, the former residence of all of the plaintiffs, allowed residents of the Northern Mariana Islands who had formerly lived in Illinois to vote as absentee voters, but denied former residents living in other unincorporated territories the same right. The US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in 2016 that under the Absentee Voting Act, former residents of US states are entitled to vote in elections of the last jurisdiction in which they qualified to vote, as long as they reside in a foreign location. Using rational basis review, the court stated that the Northern Mariana Islands had a unique relationship with the United States and could be treated differently. It further pointed out that as the law does not differentiate between residents within a territory, as to who formerly resided in a state, but all are treated equally, no violation occurred. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit concurred with the decision, but dismissed the case for lack of standing because the application of the Absentee Voting Act in Illinois is a state issue.

Young adults.

A third voting rights movement was won in the 1960’s to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Activists noted that most of the young men who were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War were too young to have any voice in the selection of the leaders who were sending them to fight. Some states had already lowered the voting age: notably Georgia, Kentucky, and Hawaii, had already permitted voting by persons younger than twenty-one.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment, ratified in 1971, prohibits federal and state laws which set a minimum voting age higher than 18 years. As of 2008, no state has opted for an earlier age, although some state governments have discussed it. California has, since the 1980s, allowed persons who are 17 to register to vote for an election where the election itself will occur on or after their 18th birthday, and several states including Indiana allow 17-year-olds to vote in a primary election provided they will be 18 by the general election.

Prisoners.

Prisoner voting rights are defined by individual states, and the laws are different from state to state. Some states allow only individuals on probation to vote. Others allow individuals on parole and probation. As of 2012, only Florida, Kentucky and Virginia continue to impose a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record, absent a restoration of rights granted by the Governor or state legislature. However, in Kentucky, a felon's rights can be restored after the completion of a restoration process to regain civil rights.

In 2007, Florida legislature restored voting rights to convicted felons who had served their sentences. In March 2011, however, Governor Rick Scott reversed the 2007 reforms. He signed legislation that permanently disenfranchises citizens with past felony convictions. After a referendum in 2018, however, Florida residents voted to restore voting rights to roughly 1.4 million felons who have completed their sentences.

In July 2005, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack issued an executive order restoring the right to vote for all persons who have completed supervision. On October 31, 2005, Iowa's Supreme Court upheld mass re enfranchisement of convicted felons. Nine other states disenfranchise felons for various lengths of time following the completion of their probation or parole.

Other than Maine and Vermont, all U.S. states prohibit felons from voting while they are in prison. In Puerto Rico, felons in prison are allowed to vote in elections.

Practices in the United States are in contrast to some European nations that allow prisoners to vote, while other European countries have restrictions on voting while serving a prison sentence, but not after release. Prisoners have been allowed to vote in Canada since 2002.

The United States has a higher proportion of its population in prison than any other Western nation, and more than Russia or China. The dramatic rise in the rate of incarceration in the United States, a 500% increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, has vastly increased the number of people disenfranchised because of the felon provisions.

According to the Sentencing Project, as of 2010 an estimated 5.9 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction, a number equivalent to 2.5% of the U.S. voting-age population and a sharp increase from the 1.2 million people affected by felony disenfranchisement in 1976. Given the prison populations, the effects have been most disadvantageous for minority and poor communities.

Legal challenges to disfranchisement.

Although African Americans quickly began legal challenges to such provisions in the 19th century, it was years before any were successful before the U.S. Supreme Court. Booker T Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within societal constraints of the period at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange representation for numerous legal challenges to disfranchisement. He called upon wealthy Northern allies and philanthropists to raise funds for the cause. The Supreme Court's upholding of Mississippi's new constitution, in Williams v Mississippi (1898), encouraged other states to follow the Mississippi plan of disenfranchisement. African Americans brought other legal challenges, as in Giles v Harris (1903) and Giles v Teasley (1904), but the Supreme Court upheld Alabama constitutional provisions. In 1915, Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement due to Supreme Court cases.

From early in the 20th century, the newly established National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in organizing or supporting legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. Gradually they planned the strategy of which cases to take forward. In Guinn v United States (1915), the first case in which the NAACP filed a brief, the Supreme Court struck down the grandfather clause in Oklahoma and Maryland. Other states in which it was used had to retract their legislation as well. The challenge was successful.

But, nearly as rapidly as the Supreme Court determined a specific provision was unconstitutional, state legislatures developed new statutes to continue disenfranchisement. For instance, in Smith v Allwright (1944), the Supreme Court struck down the use of state-sanctioned all-white primaries by the Democratic Party in the South. States developed new restrictions on black voting; Alabama passed a law giving county registrars more authority as to which questions they asked applicants in comprehension or literacy tests. The NAACP continued with steady progress in legal challenges to disenfranchisement and segregation.

In 1957, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to implement the Fifteenth Amendment. It established the United States Civil Rights Commission; among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

As late as 1962, programs such as Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona attempted to stymie minority voting through literacy tests. The Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes as a condition of voter registration and voting in federal elections. Many states continued to use them in state elections as a means of reducing the number of voters.

Religious test.

In several British North American colonies, before and after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jews, Quakers, Catholics, and/or Atheists were excluded from the franchise and/or from running for elections.

The Delaware Constitution of 1776 stated that "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall ... also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.". This was repealed by Article I, Section II. of the 1792 Constitution: "No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under this State". The 1778 Constitution of the State of South Carolina stated, "No person shall be eligible to sit in the house of representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion", the 1777 Constitution of the State of Georgia (article 6) that "The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county ... and they shall be of the Protestant religion".

With the growth in the number of Baptists in Virginia before the Revolution, who challenged the established Anglican Church, the issues of religious freedom became important to rising leaders such as James Madison. As a young lawyer, he defended Baptist preachers who were not licensed by (and were opposed by) the established state Anglican Church. He carried developing ideas about religious freedom to be incorporated into the constitutional convention of the United States.

In 1787, Article One of the United States Constitution stated that "the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature". More significantly, Article Six disavowed the religious test requirements of several states, saying: "o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

But, in Maryland, Jewish Americans were excluded from State office until the law requiring candidates to affirm a belief in an afterlife was repealed in 1828.

African Americans and poor whites.

At the time of ratification of the Constitution in the late 18th century, most states had property qualifications which restricted the franchise; the exact amount varied by state, but by some estimates, more than half of white men were disenfranchised. Several states granted suffrage to free men of color after the Revolution, including North Carolina. This fact was noted by Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis' dissent in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), as he emphasized that blacks had been considered citizens at the time the Constitution was ratified:

Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.