Case Title: IN RE: LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM NO. 334, STATE QUESTION 711

Citation: 

Docket Number: 101136

State: oklahoma

Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

Date: 2004-09-23T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN RE: LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM NO. 334, STATE QUESTION 711  IN RE: LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM NO. 334, STATE QUESTION 711 2004 OK 75 107 P.3d 556 Case Number: 101136 Decided: 09/23/2004 As Corrected: September 28, 2004 THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA IN RE: LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM NO. 334, STATE QUESTION 711 ORDER The Court declines to assume original jurisdiction. DONE BY THE ORDER OF THE SUPREME COURT IN CONFERENCE THIS 23rd DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 2004. /S/CHIEF JUSTICE WATT, C.J., OPALA, V.C.J., LAVENDER, HARGRAVE, WINCHESTER, EDMONDSON, JJ. - CONCUR. KAUGER, J. - CONCURRING SPECIALLY. OPALA, V.C.J., with whom EDMONDSON, J., joins, concurring. ¶1 Petitioners invoke this court's original cognizance, conferred by the terms of Art. 7 §4, Okl.Const., to target for removal from the general election ballot of Legislative Referendum No. 334, State Question No. 711. The question refers for the electorate's approval (or rejection) a provision to be added to the state constitution ¶2 The court denies the petitioners' application to assume its original jurisdiction without assigning reasons for today's action. I join the court's disposition of the case and write in concurrence. Mindful though I am that ordinarily sapienti verbum satis, ¶3 None of the petitioners' multiple arguments identifies the presence in the referendum's text of even a single fatal state or federal constitutional flaw that facially taints the measure and would prevent it from becoming law upon the electorate's approval. Absent that showing, this court is powerless to convene itself as a board of censors to purge the ballot of the referendum in contest. Nothing is tendered for the court's permissible forensic inquiry. What remains here to be confronted is pure political process in progress. At this stage the process clearly lies beyond the reach of judicial scrutiny. Unenacted measures are not law. Courts may not subject them to presubmission scrutiny for constitutional orthodoxy. The two-century-old extratextual doctrine of judicial review applies solely to the law in force, not to lawmaking in progress. SUMMARY ¶4 Whether to be effected through legislative enactments or legislative referenda, through the people's initiative or their referenda, lawmaking process while in progress must stand protected by the free-speech clause of the First Amendment and by its state constitutional counterpart in Art. 2 §22, Okl.Const.,5 from impermissible judicial censorship as well as from other premature tinkering attempted in the name of constitutional scrutiny. Judicial testing for constitutional orthodoxy which calls for an examination beyond the presence of fatal defects that are facially apparent must await the measure's transformation into enforceable law applied in a lively controversy. Law made by the electorate is not given greater or lesser immunity from postenactment judicial review than law passed by the legislative assembly. Law is law. It commands equal dignity. A creation of Chief Justice John Marshall,6 judicial review does not sanction forensic scrutiny of unenacted measures still passing through the lawmaking track.7 ¶5 I continue to stand by my undiminished commitment to the teachings of this court's early pronouncement in Threadgill,8 which holds that measures proposed for approval by the people as law may not undergo constitutional testing of the textual contents in advance of their adoption by the electorate. Fidelity to the rule in Threadgill commands that I today accede to the court's disposition.9 FOOT