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Facial Challenges

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

The Supreme Court issued one opinion today in the political case of Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, No. 06-713. For criminal law practitioners, the case is primarily of interest for the Court's continuing hostility to "facial" challenges to statutes. In United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987), the Court set the hurdle for such a challenge almost impossibly high: "that no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid.? The Court has waffled since, but facial challenges remain much more difficult than they were in earlier times, and today the Court rejected a facial challenge to Washington's "blanket" primary, telling the plaintiffs to wait until the law is actually applied and then challenge it as applied...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).