constitutional avoidance doctrine
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 323 U.S. 101 - Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin · 1944Most cited · 1,554 citing opinions
If there is one doctrine more deeply rooted than any other in the process of constitutional adjudication, it is that we ought not to pass on questions of constitutionality—here the distribution of the taxing power as between the State and the Nation—unless such adjudication is unavoidable.
How often courts cite the case defining “constitutional avoidance doctrine”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “constitutional avoidance doctrine” — 1,538 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.