Opinion ID: 1385357
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: PART II Modifications of the dissenting opinion []

Text: 1. The last paragraph commencing on page 231 of 27 Cal.3d is deleted; and these two paragraphs are added on page 234, immediately following the first two lines: By participating in this case the seven justices here have respected the rule of necessity. Yet the majority opinion cites only Atkins, supra, 556 F.2d 1028. The most informative discussion I know of the perplexities and scope of the rule appears in section 12.04 of Professor Davis' Administrative Law Treatise (plus his supplements) (hereafter Davis Treatise). His conclusions are etched by these introductory comments in section 12.03, which deals with Interest: One who stands to gain or lose personally by a decision either way is disqualified by reason of interest to participate in the exercise of judicial functions. Most of the law concerning disqualification because of interest applies with equal force to judges and to administrative adjudicators. [Fn. omitted.] The overshadowing and almost overwhelming fact about the law of disqualification for interest is that, as we shall see in the ensuing section, most of that law is largely defeated by the rule of necessity.  (Italics added.) [3] Is it possible that my colleagues overlooked or ignored a corollary to the rule of necessity that might well have had a significant impact? That corollary is that judges who but for the rule would have been disqualified should exemplify a bend-over-backwards stance; that is to say, they should approach the proffered legal issues with both marked and exceptional care. (See the Davis Treatise at p. 166: Whatever the principles ... for ordinary cases, the extraordinary cases which impel courts to resort to the rule of necessity may often deserve extraordinary scrutiny.... See also pp. 358-359 of Davis, Administrative Law: Cases  Text  Problems (6th ed. 1977): The easy and seemingly automatic application of the rule of necessity is more dangerous than is recognized in typical judicial opinions, for grave injustice may result from allowing disqualified officers to adjudicate cases.... [An] escape route ... is ... to review both more broadly and more intensively when the rule of necessity is invoked than when no bias gives rise to use of the rule of necessity.) Is it perhaps regrettable that the words of the majority opinion disclose no honoring of that approach here? 2. Footnotes 2 and 3 are inverted, and 2 substituted for 3 on p. 233. 3. The paragraphs that follow are substituted for the paragraph that introduces the opinion beginning on page 219 of 27 Cal.3d: I dissent. One year ago, in another politically sensitive case, I quoted Learned Hand as follows ( People v. Tanner (1979) 24 Cal.3d 514, 538): `When we ask what Congress [or another legislature] intended, usually there can be no answer, if what we mean is what any person or group of persons actually had in mind. Flinch as we may, what we do, and must do, is to project ourselves, as best we can, into the position of those who uttered the words, and to impute to them how they would have dealt with the concrete occasion.' ( United States v. Klinger (2d Cir.1952) 199 F.2d 645, 648.) The distinguished justice added, `He who supposes that he can be certain of the result, is the least fitted for the attempt.' How might this salary case have been decided if each of us on the court had projected himself conscientiously into the 1964, 1969, 1972, and 1976 positions of those legislators who uttered the words that are contained in the legislative measures pertinent here? In 1969, for instance, what if a legislator in debate (or the Legislative Counsel, in his summary) had stated, Interested observers have noted that (1) for incumbent appellate judges, increases based on the Consumer Price Index will irrevocably be guaranteed until those judges' terms expire, and (2) for some incumbents the terms will not expire until 1982? What if a legislative committee chairman had advised: For each judge you are being asked to approve an `employment contract' and to endorse his or her `promised compensation' [ ante at pp. 538, 539]. The bill as now drafted means you are about to adopt `agreements of employment ... [that] are binding and constitutionally protected' [ ante, p. 538]. Its `full cost-of-living provision' would require our State to pay all judges `the represented compensation [including full cost-of-living increases] for their terms of office'; that is, for some judges until 1982  more than 12 years from now [ id. ]. Further, regardless of the salaries that, in future years, laws will set for all other state officers and employees, the Legislature may never impair the contracts with judges that this bill would adopt unless there is some `emergency serving to protect a basic interest of society' [ ante, p. 539]. In brief summary, I dissent here because I am persuaded that no evidence whatever suggests that the California Legislature ever intended (1) to promise judges anything, (2) to adopt any formally recognized agreements of employment [ ante at p. 538], or (3) to preclude modification by statute of cost-of-living adjustments that demonstrably were experimental and tentative. If this court's 1980 views had been forecast by anyone, if slide-rule projections of the now grotesquely swollen and embarrassingly out-of-line salaries  cultured anachronically in the medium of the Consumer Price Index plan  had been reported, if the pay scales that now have won the majority's blessing had earlier been arrayed in full Winchester Mystery House splendor, [] I think it is inconceivable that the legislators would have enacted and left unchanged the pending proposals  in 1969, for unrestricted use of the Consumer Price Index and, in 1972, for rigidifying by Assembly Constitutional Amendment not only the salaries of elected state officers but also (as hindsight now seems to counsel) the unique salary-adjustment-formula for incumbent judges. Finally, as will be explained, I think my colleagues have failed to answer several arguments ably set forth in the Court of Appeal opinion in this case (by Fleming, J. with Roth, P.J. and Beach, J. concurring). RACANELLI, J. [] Dissenting. I join in the separate dissenting opinion Part I of Justice Newman. The failure to grant rehearing and to permit intervention by those petitioning classes of judges and pensioners treated unequally under our original decision works a manifest injustice to such discriminated classes who have been effectively foreclosed from independently asserting their respective interests. (Cf. Code Civ. Proc., § 387, subd. (b).) Moreover, the sensitive institutional policy questions raised by that decision mandate rehearing in order that such unresolved issues may be fully considered and determined.