Opinion ID: 1111406
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Underlying Principles

Text: The term `police power' connotes the time-tested conceptual limit of public encroachment upon private interests. State v. Lee, 51 Haw. 516, 517, 465 P.2d 573, 575 (1970) (quoting Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U.S. 590, 594, 82 S.Ct. 987, 990, 8 L.Ed.2d 130 (1962)). It is often said that the police power is one of the least limitable of governmental powers. It is inherent in the sovereign, and all rights are possessed subject to it. Of course, the police power of the State is not absolute, but is subject to constitutional limitations. W.H. Greenwell, Ltd. v. Department of Land and Natural Resources, 50 Haw. 207, 209, 436 P.2d 527, 528-29 (1968) (citations omitted). Perhaps this court's earliest attempt to delineate the boundaries of the sovereign police power appears in Territory v. Kraft, 33 Haw. 397 (1935). The defendant in Kraft had deigned to sell, for thirty-five cents a copy, photographs that he had taken of a group including Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, and Joseph B. Poindexter, Governor of the Territory of Hawaii. The defendant was subsequently charged and convicted under a criminal statuteAct 103that prohibited a person from practicing or holding [himself] out as competent to practice photography for profit without having passed an examination and received an official certificate. Id. at 408. This court reversed the defendant's conviction and struck down the statute as an unconstitutional encroachment upon the liberty of the citizen to choose and pursue an innocent occupation. Id. at 408. In doing so, the Kraft court described the contours of the police power in the following fashion: The primary question ... presented by the appeal is whether by the passage of Act 103 the legislature exceeded the powers conferred upon it. More specifically the question is, Was it within the constitutional power of the legislature to exclude from the practice of photography for profit all persons who had not complied with the provisions of the Act? The answer to this inquiry depends on the nature of photographywhether as an occupation it is innocent and innocuous or whether it is infected with some quality that might render it dangerous to the morals, the health, the comfort[,] or the welfare of those who constitute the public. If the latter is true[,] it is within the police power of the legislature to place upon it the regulations and restrictions contained in the Act. If[,] on the other hand[,] the practice of photography is harmless and without detriment to the public welfare [,] it was beyond the power of the legislature to restrict it to those having a certificate of proficiency. ... The police power is limited to enactments which have reference to the public health or comfort, or to the safety or welfare of society.... .... It is unquestionably true that the police power of the State has an ever-widening horizon. It is nevertheless not boundless[,] and its exercise is still under the control of certain classic principles of constitutional law. It cannot infringe upon the guaranteed right of the citizen to life, liberty[,] or property and the pursuit of happiness unless[,] in the exercise of this right[,] the public health, safety[,] or welfare is imperiled. ... ... Happily for all, the fundamental guaranties of the Constitution cannot be freely submerged if and whenever some ostensible justification is advanced and the police power invoked .... The liberty mentioned in [the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution] means not only the right of the citizen to be free from the mere physical restraint of his person, as by incarceration, but the term is deemed to embrace the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties; to be free to use them in all lawful ways; [and] to pursue any livelihood or avocation .... [T]he police power of the State is not unlimited, and is subject to judicial review, and[,] when exerted in an arbitrary or oppressive manner[,] such laws may be annulled as violative of rights protected by the Constitution. ... The mere fact that a court may differ with the legislature in its views of public policy, or that judges may hold views inconsistent with the propriety of the legislation in question, affords no ground for judicial interference, unless the act in question is unmistakably and palpably in excess of legislative power.... .... So long as the police power is confined to its legitimate purpose and is not through some fallacy of logic given a specious recognition[,] it is of inestimable value; otherwise[,] there is danger of its becoming an evil. There is as great peril to the public in its injudicious extension as in its injudicious restriction. In other words, as a servant of the people it is invaluable[,] but as their master it might become intolerable. Id. at 400-06 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted) (emphases added). See also State v. Shigematsu, 52 Haw. 604, 607, 483 P.2d 997, 999 (1971) (citing Kraft with approval for the proposition that in the exercise of its police power the State may curtail or restrict acts of individuals unless the curtailments or restrictions unreasonably infringe upon the fundamental personal rights of individuals (emphasis added)); cf. Lee, 51 Haw. at 517, 465 P.2d at 575 ( `To justify the state in [thus] interposing its authority in behalf of the public, it must appear, first, that the interests of the public [generally, as distinguished from those of a particular class] require such interference; and, second, that the means are reasonably necessary for the accomplishment of the purpose and not unduly oppressive upon individuals.' (Quoting Goldblatt, 369 U.S. at 594, 82 S.Ct. at 990 (quoting Lawton v. Steele, 152 U.S. 133, 137, 14 S.Ct. 499, 501, 38 L.Ed. 385 (1894)).)) (Brackets in original.). Thus, the Kraft analysis (which is as authoritative today as it was over sixty-two years ago) instructs that the prerogative of the state to criminalize conduct through the exercise of the police power, while having an ever-widening horizon, is nevertheless constrained, by its very nature and without more, by certain classic principles of constitutional law, including the following: (1) it may not proscribe conduct that is merely innocent, innocuous, or harmless; (2) its reach is limited to the proscription of conduct that imperils the public health, safety[,] or welfare; and (3) it may not be exerted in an arbitrary ... manner[.] Implicit in the Kraft analysis is an acceptance of the centrality of the prevention of harm to others as a prerequisite objective of the state's invocation of the police power to criminalize conduct. In this respect, Kraft echoes the core thesis of the political philosopher John Stuart Mill's seminal tract: ... [T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. .... ... The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person's conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding.)... .... ... When, by conduct ..., a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term .... In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely selfregarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty. [4] Whenever, in short, there is definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an[other] individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of ... law. [5] But with regard to the merely contingent, or, as it may be called, constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which neither violates any specific duty to the public[ ] nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself[,] the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom .... John Stuart Mill, On Liberty 22, 135, 145-47 (The Legal Classics Library 1992) (1859) (emphases added). In his exhaustive and definitive four-volume treatise, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, [6] Professor Feinberg refines the Millian harm to others principle (embedded in the Kraft analysis) as follows: ... [I]t is legitimate for the state to prohibit conduct that causes serious private harm, or the unreasonable risk of such harm, or harm to important public institutions or practices. In short, state interference with a citizen's behavior tends to be morally justified when it is reasonably necessary (that is, when there are reasonable grounds for taking it to be necessary as well as effective) to prevent harm or the unreasonable risk of harm to parties other than the person interfered with.... This principle ... can be called the harm to others principle or the harm principle for short.... ... Clearly not every kind of act that causes harm to others can rightly be prohibited, but only those that cause avoidable and substantial harm. Since the effect of legal coercion may itself be harmful to the interests of the actor it restrains, one would think that only the prevention of still more serious harms to others could justify its infliction.... So the harm principle must be made sufficiently precise to permit the formulation of a criterion of seriousness, and also, if possible, some way of grading types of harms in terms of their seriousness. Without these further specifications, the harm principle may be taken to invite state interference without limit, for virtually every kind of human conduct can affect the interests of others for better and worse to some degree, and thus would properly be the state's business. .... ... Since an invasion of the interest in liberty is a harm, it follows that all legal prohibitions, insofar as they narrow options, cause some harm which must be taken into account in the calculations of the legislator. The legislative invasion of citizens' interests in liberty can be justified by the harm principle only if necessary to prevent the greater harm still that would be caused to victims of the proscribed conduct. But the interest in liberty plays a relevant role in these calculations only to the extent that it would actually be invaded by the contemplated legislative action.... Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others 11-12, 217 (Oxford Univ. Press 1984) (emphases in original). The bottom line of my discussion of the Kraft analysis is the inescapable conclusion that, wholly separate and apart from any consideration of the constitutional right to privacy, the harm to others principle is a long-established circumscription that limits the exercise of the state's police power in Hawai`i for the purpose of criminalizing conduct.