Opinion ID: 1164964
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: due process limits upon a judicial tribunal's exercise of prosecutorial functions

Text: The Supreme Court claims for itself the constitutionally-invested power to control and regulate, in this State, the practice of law and the licensing, ethics and discipline of legal practitioners. The state bar agency  with its constituent body, the Board of Bar Examiners  functions as an organ of the Supreme Court aiding it in the performance of the judiciary's mandated mission of our fundamental law. [3] The bar's government  much like the licensing and professional responsibility of legal practitioners  is structured by rules. All of these rules [4] are promulgated by this court in the exercise of a legislative function as the bar's regulator. [5] The essential characteristics of the court's responsibility as a regulator are to be distinguished from those which attend an exercise of its jurisdiction as the sole and final arbiter of the practitioner's standing and status before Oklahoma courts. In the latter capacity this court functions, not as a legislator but rather qua adjudicator. [6] Within an administrative agency the merger of investigative and enforcement responsibility with that of adjudication is not forbidden as a violation of due process if in the broader institutional framework safeguards do exist against unchecked administrative discretion and its abuse. The union of these functions is constitutionally countenanced so long as provisions do exist for the legislature to change the agency's rules and the judiciary is free effectively to correct errors occurring in administrative adjudication. [7] In contrast to the principles which affect administrative agencies, due process is offended when a judicial institution functions both as an organ of enforcement and adjudication. Concentrating the powers of judge and prosecutor in the same person or body poses an unreasonably high risk of compromising the protected and cherished value of judicial detachment and neutrality. [8]