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Thomas, J., dissenting
have the duty and the power to maintain the public peace, and, when necessary, to disperse groups of individuals who threaten it. The plurality, however, concludes that the city's commonsense effort to combat gang loitering fails constitutional scrutiny for two separate reasons—because it infringes upon gang members' constitutional right to "loiter for innocent purposes," ante, at 53, and because it is vague on its face, ante, at 55. A majority of the Court endorses the latter conclusion. I respectfully disagree.
A
We recently reconfirmed that "[o]ur Nation's history, legal traditions, and practices . . . provide the crucial 'guideposts for responsible decisionmaking' . . . that direct and restrain our exposition of the Due Process Clause." Glucksberg, 521 U. S., at 721 (quoting Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U. S. 494, 503 (1977) (plurality opinion)). Only laws that infringe "those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' " offend the Due Process Clause. Glucksberg, supra, at 720-721.
The plurality asserts that "the freedom to loiter for innocent purposes is part of the 'liberty' protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." Ante, at 53. Yet it acknowledges—as it must—that "antiloitering ordinances have long existed in this country." Ante, at 53, n. 20; see also 177 Ill. 2d 440, 450, 687 N. E. 2d 53, 60 (1997) (case below) ("Loitering and vagrancy statutes have been utilized throughout American history in an attempt to prevent crime by removing 'undesirable persons' from public before they have the opportunity to engage in criminal activity"). In derogation of the framework we articulated only two Terms ago in Glucksberg, the plurality asserts that this history fails to "persuad[e] us that the right to engage in loitering that is entirely harmless . . . is not a part of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause." Ante, at 54,
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