2008 Pa. Super. 200 - Commonwealth v. Baxter’s Empirical Analysis
2008
Citation profile
5 state decisions
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 921 (Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act) · 18 U.S.C. § 922 (Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act) · 18 U.S.C. § 923
Relies on Grayned v. City of Rockford · Grayned v. City of Rockford · Colten v. Commonwealth of Kentucky · Commonwealth v. Barud · Lazeration v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A statute is vague if it fails to give people of ordinary intelligence fair notice as to what conduct is forbidden, or if they cannot gauge their future, contemplated conduct, or if it encourages arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement. A vague law is one whose terms necessarily require people to guess at its meaning. If a law is deficient — vague—in any of these ways, then it violates due process and is constitutionally void. By contrast, to be valid, a penal statute must set forth a crime with sufficient definiteness that an ordinary person can understand and predict what conduct is prohibited. The law must provide reasonable standards which people can use to gauge the legality of their contemplated, future behavior. At the same time, however, the void for vagueness doctrine does not mean that statutes must detail criminal conduct with utter precision. Condemned to the use of words, we can never expect mathematical certainty from our language. Indeed, due process and the void for vagueness doctrine are not intended to elevate the practical difficulties of drafting legislation into a constitutional dilemma. Rather, these doctrines are rooted in a rough idea of fairness. As such, statutes may be general enough to embrace a range of human conduct as long as they speak fair warning about what behavior is unlawful. Such statutes do not run afoul of due process of law. Finally, when evaluating challenges to a statute — whether those challenges are based on vagueness ... or any ot”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.