This contrasts with a successful as-applied challenge, which will result in a court narrowing the circumstances in which the statute may constitutionally be applied without striking it down.
Facial challenges also run contrary to the fundamental principle of judicial restraint that courts should neither "anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it" nor "formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied."
Finally, facial challenges threaten to short circuit the democratic process by preventing laws embodying the will of the people from being implemented in a manner consistent with the Constitution.
In U.S. v. Stevens, it stated, "To succeed in a typical facial attack, [the respondent] would have to establish “that no set of circumstances exists under which [the statute] would be valid”, United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987), or that the statute lacks any “plainly legitimate sweep", Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 740, n. 7 (1997) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgments) (internal quotation marks omitted).
[6] Despite the claims of Supreme Court Justices that facial challenges should be rare, empirical studies have been carried out that seem to prove otherwise.
Also, the article asserts that contrary to popular belief, facial challenges are not framed by only a few aberrant constitutional tests.