266
Opinion of the Court
There are three related manifestations of the fair warning requirement. First, the vagueness doctrine bars enforcement of "a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application." Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U. S. 385, 391 (1926); accord, Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U. S. 352, 357 (1983); Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S. 451, 453 (1939). Second, as a sort of "junior version of the vagueness doctrine," H. Packer, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction 95 (1968), the canon of strict construction of criminal statutes, or rule of lenity, ensures fair warning by so resolving ambiguity in a criminal statute as to apply it only to conduct clearly covered. See, e. g., Liparota v. United States, 471 U. S. 419, 427 (1985); United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 347-348 (1971); McBoyle, supra, at 27. Third, although clarity at the requisite level may be supplied by judicial gloss on an otherwise uncertain statute, see, e. g., Bouie, supra, at 357-359; Kolender, supra, at 355-356; Lanzetta, supra, at 455-457; Jeffries, Legality, Vagueness, and the Construction of Penal Statutes, 71 Va. L. Rev. 189, 207 (1985), due process bars courts from applying a novel construction of a criminal statute to conduct that neither the statute nor any prior judicial decision has fairly disclosed to be within its scope, see, e. g., Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188, 191-192 (1977); Rabe v. Washington, 405 U. S. 313 (1972) (per curiam); Bouie, supra, at 353-354; cf. U. S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 3; id., § 10, cl. 1; Bouie, supra, at 353-354 (Ex Post Facto
States v. Aguilar, 515 U. S. 593, 600 (1995). See generally H. Packer, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction 79-96 (1968) (discussing "principle of legality," "that conduct may not be treated as criminal unless it has been so defined by [a competent] authority . . . before it has taken place," as implementing separation of powers, providing notice, and preventing abuses of official discretion) (quotation at 80); Jeffries, Legality, Vagueness, and the Construction of Penal Statutes, 71 Va. L. Rev. 189 (1985).
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