Cite as: 538 U. S. 343 (2003)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
gether unsurprising that there is no precedent for such a holding. For where state law is ambiguous, treating jury instructions as binding interpretations would cede an enormous measure of power over state law to trial judges. A single judge's idiosyncratic reading of a state statute could trigger its invalidation. In this case, the troubling instruction—"The burning of a cross, by itself, is sufficient evidence from which you may infer the required intent," App. 196— was taken verbatim from Virginia's Model Jury Instructions. But these Model Instructions have been neither promulgated by the legislature nor formally adopted by the Virginia Supreme Court. And it is hornbook law, in Virginia as elsewhere, that "[p]roffered instructions which do not correctly state the law . . . are erroneous and should be refused." 10A Michie's Jurisprudence of Virginia and West Virginia, Instructions § 15, p. 35 (Supp. 2000).
The plurality's willingness to treat this jury instruction as binding (and to strike down § 18.2-423 on that basis) would be shocking enough had the Virginia Supreme Court offered no guidance as to the proper construction of the prima-facie-evidence provision. For ordinarily we would decline to pass upon the constitutionality of an ambiguous state statute until that State's highest court had provided a binding construc-challenge. Id., at 3 (noting that the defendant "maintained at all times that the ordinance as applied to his conduct violated his right of free speech . . ." (emphasis added)); id., at 5 (noting that "[a]s construed and applied [the provision] at least contains parts that are unconstitutional" (emphasis added)); id., at 6 ("The pinch of the statute is in its application" (emphasis added)); ibid. ("The record makes clear that petitioner at all times challenged the constitutionality of the ordinance as construed and applied to him" (emphasis added)). See also Isserles, Overcoming Over-breadth: Facial Challenges and the Valid Rule Requirement, 48 Am. U. L. Rev. 359, 433, n. 333 (1998) (characterizing Terminiello as "adopting a court's jury instruction as an authoritative narrowing construction of a breach of the peace ordinance but ultimately confining its decision to overturning the defendant's conviction rather than invalidating the statute on its face").
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