Case Citator › United States v. Lewis J. Smith

United States v. Lewis J. Smith

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Abrogated
Court
Sixth Circuit
Citation
73 F.3d 1414
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
40 of 40
Citing cases (total)
40
Treatment dates
2016
Abrogated
A reviewed court treats this case as abrogated by later authority. All 40 flagged citations have been read. United States v. Pawlak rejected Smith's rule that the Sentencing Guidelines could not face a vagueness challenge, as listed below.
More on how this was screened

The Supreme Court later held in Beckles v. United States that the advisory Guidelines cannot be challenged for vagueness. The Sixth Circuit has since said that Beckles abrogated Pawlak and restored the advisory Guidelines' residual clause. Smith's separate rule that published panel decisions bind later panels continues to be followed.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

40 later cases cite United States v. Lewis J. Smith; 40 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

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Treatments

Abrogated

  • The Sixth Circuit held that intervening Supreme Court decisions displaced Smith's bar on vagueness challenges to the Sentencing Guidelines and invalidated the advisory Guidelines' residual clause.

    United States v. Pawlak · Sixth Circuit · filed

    Although the parties acknowledge that we have previously held the Guidelines “are not susceptible to a vagueness attack” because “there is no constitutional right to sentencing guidelines,” United States v. Smith, 73 F.3d 1414, 1417-18 (6th Cir.1996) (quoting United States v. Salas, No. 93-5897, 1994 WL 24982, at *2 (6th Cir. Jan. 27, 1994) (unpublished table decision)), they agree that the Supreme Court has undermined our prior precedent in its intervening decisions. Accordingly, the parties maintain that Johnson’s reasoning applies equally to the Guidelines, and Pawlak’s sentence should be vacated. We agree.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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