Three Strikes Is Out

The finale of the latest Supreme Court Term featured a landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, narrow defenses of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law and independent redistricting commissions, and a little case about a man caught in possession of a short-barreled shotgun. While the first three cases raise issues that have been hotly debated in cities across the country, few legal questions have appeared before the Justices so frequently in recent years as the one raised in the last case: whether certain criminal acts pose a "a serious potential risk of physical injury to another" and thereby count towards a federal three-strikes law. Resolving this question once-and-for-all, the Justices in Johnson v. United States threw up their hands and struck down the statute as void for vagueness.