Opinion ID: 1164964
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: separation of powers and due process considerations

Text: While our state constitution expressly institutes a tripartite division of government responsibilities, [9] it does not categorically forbid one department to exercise  as a mere incident of its general mission  powers which, while not expressly delegated to another, might have been more appropriately reposed elsewhere. The legislature initiates and holds impeachment trials, agencies of the executive service administer adjudicative process and courts legislate interstitially by fashioning and promulgating rules of procedure  to give but some examples of a permissible merger of powers. Each of the three divisions of our government  state and federal  does, on occasion, execute powers of the general kind that belong primarily to one of the other two departments. If these functions are not, by express constitutional delegation, set apart to another division of government and so long as they can be compatibly combined in one institution, they are held to remain within the sphere permitted by fundamental law. The very same rule seems to be applied by the federal judiciary. Even though the federal constitution  unlike our own  does not explicitly enjoin a division of responsibilities among the three branches, [10] neither does it expressly authorize their merger. Combining incompatible functions in one agency, or allowing one division to usurp powers expressly delegated to another, is generally deemed offensive to constitutional order, whether the separation-of-powers doctrine is explicitly mandated by the text (of the document) or is merely recognized as implicit in its provisions. [11] Legislative, as distinguished from executive, power is the authority to make law, but not to execute it or to appoint agents charged with the duty of enforcement. The latter is purely an executive function. [12] In Oklahoma, the responsibility for legislation, prosecution and adjudication in the arena of professional discipline of legal practitioners is constitutionally reposed in the judicial department. [13] While legislative and adjudicative functions are performed by this court, the enforcement role stands delegated to the organs of the state bar. A decision to, or not to, re-investigate a complaint and one to, or not to, charge are akin to each other. They result from the same reasoning process. Both exemplify an exercise of prosecutorial judgment that precedes courtroom presentation and judicial testing of evidence. The process employed in reaching both decisions calls for comparative weighing of proof at hand, and other likely to be obtainable, against that which is required to support a legally cognizable charge. Every decision in which that kind of discretionary assessment of proof has to be made before charges are brought must remain free of the Supreme Court's control lest due process be contravened. [14] While as a legislator in the arena of bar ethics and discipline, this court can and does fashion, by rules, the necessary prosecutorial machinery, it cannot itself exercise enforcement powers for, or on behalf of, the instrumentality it has created. Once an institutional design for the discharge of prosecutorial function has been structured, this court can no longer cast itself in the dual role of judge and enforcer to command or control, directly or obliquely, the institution of bar charges. An exercise of both functions would be inconsistent with this court's constitutionally-mandated responsibility for adjudication of bar disciplinary proceedings. [15] Neither party disputes that under Art. 10 § 3 [16] the state bar's Board of Governors [Board] may re-examine the actions of the Commission. So far as the record before us shows, Tweedy has never invoked the Board's reviewing power. We must therefore conclude that his non-judicial remedies have not been exhausted.