Opinion ID: 1200134
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Court Created Exceptions To The Georgia Constitution

Text: 5. A careful reading of the three cases cited by the majority for the exceptions to the constitutional mandate reveals a fundamental weakness. The first case to deviate from the constitutional mandate and the feeble foundation relied upon in the other two cited cases is Allan v. Allan, 236 Ga. 199 (223 SE2d 445) (1976). The Court in Allan, without any discussion of the Georgia Constitution or the long line of Georgia cases that have declared that an unconstitutional statute is void, relied instead upon dicta set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Chicot County Drainage District v. Baxter States Bank, 308 U. S., supra at 374. However, immediately preceding the Chicot dicta that the majority relied upon, the following appeared: [An] Act of Congress, having been found to be unconstitutional, [is] not a law; that it [is] inoperative, conferring no rights and imposing no duties. ... Norton v. Shelby County 118 U. S. 425, 442; Chicago, I & L. Ry. Co. v. Hackett, 228 U. S. 559, 566. Chicot at 374. An even more astonishing discovery in reading Chicot is that Chicot cited Norton v. Shelby County , the exact same case cited in Dennison, supra, (see Div. 3 of this dissent), for the proposition that an unconstitutional statute confers no authority upon any one, and affords protection to no one. See Div. 3 of this dissent. The Allan opinion ignored the above language with its two citations to Supreme Court decisions and quoted dicta that was completely devoid of a citation to any decision of any court. [10] Reliance on unsupported Chicot dicta in Allan or in any other case is totally without foundation and substance. The cases that follow Chicot and Allan represent abberations that should be overruled because they conflict with the Georgia Constitution and Georgia cases. See also Strickland v. Newton County, 244 Ga. 54 (258 SE2d 132) (1979) and Adams v. Adams, 249 Ga. 477, 479 (291 SE2d 518) (1982) which use Allan and Chicot as their authority.