Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024) 15 THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment As best I can tell, the Court’s first departure from those principles was the development of the vagueness doctrine. See Johnson v. United States, 576 U. S. 591, 616–620 (2015) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (describing history of vagueness doctrine). Before and at the time of the founding, American and English courts dealt with vague laws by “simply refus[ing] to apply them in individual cases.” Id., at 615. After the unfortunate rise of “substantive” due process, however, American courts began striking down statutes wholesale as “unconstitutionally indefinite.” Id., at 617. This Court first adopted that approach in 1914, see International Harvester Co. of America v. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 216, and has since repeatedly used the vagueness doctrine “to strike down democratically enacted laws” in the name of substantive due process, Sessions v. Dimaya, 584 U. S. 148, 210 (2018) (THOMAS, J., dissenting); see Johnson, 576 U. S., at 618–621 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). As I have explained, I doubt that “our practice of striking down stat—————— irreconcilable with the Constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies”); Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. v. Wellman, 143 U. S. 339, 345 (1892) (explaining that judicial review of a statute’s constitutionality “is legitimate only in the last resort, and as a necessity in the determination of real, earnest, and vital controversy between individuals”); Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346, 357 (1911) (“[T]here [i]s no general veto power in the court upon the legislation of Congress”); Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. Co. v. Jackson Vinegar Co., 226 U. S. 217, 219 (1912) (rejecting argument that statute was “void in toto,” because the Court “must deal with the case in hand and not with imaginary ones”); Dahnke-Walker Milling Co. v. Bondurant, 257 U. S. 282, 289 (1921) (“[A] litigant can be heard to question a statute’s validity only when and so far as it is being or is about to be applied to his disadvantage”); Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923) (Federal courts “have no power per se to review and annul acts of Congress on the ground that they are unconstitutional. That question may be considered only when the justification for some direct injury suffered or threatened, presenting a justiciable issue, is made to rest upon such an act”).