Opinion ID: 2712648
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the inherent power of the judiciary

Text: Finally, the majority’s analysis concludes that the GTLA’s immunity grant to contemnors is not an infringement on the court’s inherent contempt power because the GTLA only applies to the contempt remedies provided by the Revised Judicature Act,49 but not to the judiciary’s “inherent contempt power,” which the majority concludes is limited to coercive fines and imprisonment. While my analysis does not rest on this distinction, I believe the majority fails to satisfactorily explain why any particular remedy, and indemnification damages in particular, is somehow outside the Court’s inherent contempt power, except, perhaps, because this sanction is codified in the Revised Judicature Act.50 That codification would render the remedy not part of the court’s inherent power is inconsistent with both this Court’s past pronouncement that contempt statutes are “merely declaratory of what the law was before its passage,”51 and, as the majority concedes,52 with the fact that indemnification damages have been 49 MCL 600.1715 and MCL 600.1721. 50 See MCL 600.1721. But also codified are coercive civil contempt and criminal contempt. MCL 600.1715. 51 In re Chadwick, 109 Mich 588, 600; 67 NW 1071 (1896) (citation and quotation marks omitted); see also In re Huff, 352 Mich 402, 415; 91 NW2d 613 (1958) (“There is inherent power in the courts . . . independent of, as well as by reason of statute, which is merely declaratory and in affirmation thereof, to adjudge and punish for contempt . . . .”). 52 Ante at 25 n 62. 15 recognized by Michigan contempt statutes dating back well before adoption of the 1963 Constitution.53 And while it has been recognized that the Legislature can regulate the court’s exercise of the contempt power, that regulation cannot abridge or, crucially, curtail the power.54 An intrusion of that nature into the courts’ inherent powers would violate the separation-of-powers principle.55 But the majority fails to acknowledge this principle, or explain how the removal of an entire class of sanctions is merely regulatory and not instead a curtailment.56 If, counterfactually, the GTLA expressly prohibited 53 See 1846 RS, ch 121, § 21, the original predecessor of MCL 600.1721. 54 In re Chadwick, 109 Mich at 599-600. 55 Id. at 600 (stating that if the Legislature could curtail the courts’ jurisdiction to hear contempt cases “it might encroach upon both the judicial and executive departments, and draw to itself all the powers of government, and thereby destroy that admirable system of checks and balances to be found in the organic framework of both the Federal and State institutions, and a favorite theory in the governments of the American people”) (citation and quotation marks omitted). 56 The power to curtail the judiciary’s inherent contempt power is with this Court, not the Legislature. 1963 Const, art 6, § 4 (“The supreme court shall have general superintending control over all courts; power to issue, hear and determine prerogative and remedial writs; and appellate jurisdiction as provided by rules of the supreme court.”). The majority relies on Langdon v Judges of Wayne Circuit Court, 76 Mich 358, 367; 43 NW 310 (1889), for the proposition that the GTLA merely “‘regulate[s] the mode of proceeding and prescribe[s] what punishment may be inflicted.’” Ante at 26 n 65. Langdon, however, addressed only the question of whether the circuit court had jurisdiction, as granted by statute, to hold the defendant in criminal contempt. Id. at 374 (“The assignments of error do not raise any question of irregularity in the proceedings, but solely the question of jurisdiction, and this is the only question we are called upon to decide.”). Whether removal of an entire category of available contempt sanctions is regulatory was simply not a question before the Langdon Court. The majority’s reliance on Nichols v Judge of Superior Court of Grand Rapids, 130 Mich 187; 89 NW 691 (1902), is similarly misplaced. See ante at 26 n 65. The Nichols Court did not pronounce that the Legislature had broad power to prescribe contempt punishments. Rather, the Nichols Court warned that this Court’s past jurisprudence, including Langdon, “must not 16 indemnification damages as a remedy for contempt of court, that restriction would be, at the least, constitutionally questionable. The very fact that legislative restrictions on judicial powers raise constitutional questions is another reason not to interpret the GTLA as having done so. It is well established that courts should construe acts of the Legislature to avoid constitutional questions whenever possible.57