Federal Courts, Overbreadth, and Vagueness: Guiding Principles for Constitutional Challenges to Uninterpreted State Statutes

As we have seen, both state courts and federal courts have misunderstood the scope of the federal courts' powers. Federal courts have wrongly feared that their judgments in overbreadth and vagueness cases will not be observed, and have reached out to completely enjoin the enforcement of statutes that may be valid at least in part. State courts, on the other hand, have wrongly feared that when a federal court has done just that, there was no future recourse because the law had been "struck down." Both fears are misplaced. A federal court has the same power to partially limit the scope of a state statute by injunction that it has to enjoin enforcement entirely.

Moreover, a state court always retains the power to issue a declaratory judgment narrowing the scope of the challenged state statute, no matter what the federal court does.