The "Waters of the United States" Rule and the Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine heritage.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from heritage.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 colloquially known as the Clean Water Act (CWA) to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.”REF To do so, the CWA requires parties to obtain a permit before discharging a pollutant into “navigable waters.”
“Too many crimes, too much punishment”[1] has been a recurrent problem in our criminal justice system.[2] That concern gave rise to a canon of statutory construction known as the Rule of Lenity, which has evolved to ensure that criminal laws, if objectively ambiguous, are read in favor of the defendant and against the government. So wrote William Blackstone in 1765: “[P]enal statutes must be construed strictly.”[3]