Opinion ID: 1898067
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the role of the judiciary in these matters

Text: Justice Robertson's concurrence offers some excellent opinions on the inevitability of law-making by judges. To a good deal of what he says, no reasonable exception can be taken. Today it is universally acknowledged that judges must and do make law. No longer does any knowledgeable person believe that the law subsists somewhere out there like a Platonic archetype, and that judges have only to discover it. But one need not subscribe to that idea in order to recognize that judicial legislation is legislation of a very special sort, and subject to certain peculiar rules. [J]udges do and must legislate, but they can do so only interstitially; they are confined from molar to molecular motions. Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 221, 37 S.Ct. 524, 531, 61 L.Ed. 1086, 1100 (1917) (Holmes, J.) There is no escape from judicial legislation, but that does not mean that judges have carte blanche to make whatever laws they please. One great judge put it this way: The judge, even when he is free, is still not wholly free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuant of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness... . He is to exercise a discretion informed by tradition, methodized by analogy, disciplined by system, and subordinated to the primordial necessity of order in the social life. Wide enough in all conscience is the field of discretion that remains. B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process, 141 (1921). All of this has serious implications for our position vis-a-vis the legislature. In fields where that body has acted our own legislation, if it is to be proper, must be supplemental in character and related to the fact that no legislature can do everything, foresee every contingency, or provide for every detail. Where the legislature has lawfully established a clear policy, one not forbidden by our constitution or by that of the United States, we may not annul that policy or condone efforts to circumvent it. On the contrary, we have a duty to further the ends of such a policy, even where that requires an interpretation going beyond the letter of the statute  and, in the past, we have repeatedly recognized that duty. E.g., Aikerson v. State, 274 So.2d 124, 127 (Miss. 1973); State Highway Comm'n v. Coahoma County, 203 Miss. 629, 651, 32 So.2d 555, 560 (1947); Sheffield v. Reece, 201 Miss. 133, 143, 28 So.2d 745, 759 (1947). It has been well said that a statute should be read not narrowly as through a keyhole, but in the broad light of the evils it aimed at and the goals it hoped for. U.S. ex rel. Marcus v. Hess, 317 U.S. 537, 557, 63 S.Ct. 379, 391, 87 L.Ed. 443, 456 (1943) (Jackson, J.) Similarly, Holmes once said that: The Legislature has the power to decide what the policy of the law shall be, and if it has intimated its will, however indirectly, that will should be recognized and obeyed. The major premise of the conclusion expressed in a statute, the change of policy that induces the enactment, may not be set out in terms, but it is not an adequate discharge of duty for courts to say: We see what you are driving at, but you have not said it, and therefore we shall go on as before. Johnson v. U.S., 163 F. 30, 32 (1st Cir.1908) (Holmes, J). The principle should apply with equal force where the legislature has left a public policy intact where we might have thought it more expedient to change or modify it. In our holding today, however, we take our stand at the opposite pole from these giants. Our legislature has established a clear public policy against usury, but because it failed to anticipate and forbid a particular trick of would-be usurers, we agree to look the other way when it is employed. The fact that we are doing this is disturbing in itself; our reasons for doing it make it even more so. The rationale behind the New York rule on usury was candidly proclaimed by the Court of Appeals of that state to be the following: The basic foundation of our ecomony rests on the system of free enterprise, and persons seeking to obtain financing, frequently by resort to paper corporate intermediaries, or business enterprises should expect to pay the market rate for the investment capital that they require... . So long as the borrower is aware of the potential risk and acts in the belief that the ultimate profit justifies the risk undertaken, the free market in money operates without friction and there is no need for legislative or judicial interference. If the venture falls through or if the profits do not reach anticipated levels, the businessmen will not be relieved from the consequences of his bad bargain, just as the courts will not relieve a promisor from the allegations of an improvident contract. Schneider v. Phelps, 41 N.Y.2d 238, 243, 259 N.E.2d 1361, 1365, 391 N.Y.S.2d 568, 571 (1977), See also Republic Bank of Dallas, v. Shook, 653 S.W.2d 278, 282 (Tex. 1983). In other words, without so much as a by-your-leave to the legislature we are unilaterally deciding that the availability of loans in Mississippi must be governed by principles of laissez-faire economics. I do not wish to be understood as arguing that those economic principles are wrong or bad. They may be, or they may not be. What I am saying is that we should not try to write them into our law without clear legislative warrant. As Holmes once said, when confronted with a similar attempt to incorporate economic doctrine in the law: This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large portion of the country does not entertain. If it were a question whether I agreed with that theory, I should desire to study further and long before making up my mind. But I do not conceive that to be my duty, because I strongly believe that my agreement or disagreement has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law. It is settled ... that ... state laws may regulate life in many ways which we as legislators might think as injudicious, or if you like as tyrannical, as this .. . Sunday laws and usury laws are ancient examples. Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 75, 25 S.Ct. 539, 546, 49 L.Ed. 937, 949 (1905) (Holmes, J., dissenting) (Emphasis added). At this particular court, we are fortunate to have at least one judge who is wellversed in economic theory; the concurring opinion contains a very able discussion of the factors involved in the lending of money. Judges as a class, however, cannot lay claim to any ex officio mastery of economics. When we decide cases involving economic doctrines, we must rely on the evidence furnished by the experts. In the present case, how much such evidence was adduced? None whatsoever in the court below, and only a smattering before us on appeal. But even if we were all Nobel laureates in economics, and the pertinent economic issues had been exhaustively briefed, I submit that we would still not be justified in pronouncing on the merits of conflicting economic theories. Where is our commission to do so? By what authority do we claim the right to commit the state to a particular school of economic thought? I know of none. Insofar as such a power exists, it must rest with the legislature.