Opinion ID: 2103784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Federal Case Law as the Source of Tennessee Privacy

Text: The first reason that the state right of privacy cannot be more broad than the corresponding federal right is that this Court originally defined the scope and parameters of the state right of privacy exclusively in terms of federal constitutional law. Although the majority claims that Davis supports its position concerning the breadth of the state right of privacy, the scope of the state right of privacy still cannot be said to exceed that of the federal right for one simple reason: every single state constitutional provision relied upon by the Davis Court to discover the state right of privacy also has corresponding federal support and protection. Because Davis interpreted and defined the state right of privacy solely in terms of the corresponding federal right, the majority's reliance on this case is misplaced and somewhat curious. In an attempt to deny this critical fact, the majority emphatically states that we explicitly relied on the Tennessee Constitution in Davis to extend protection [through the right of privacy] to the husband's right to procreational autonomy. While Davis was certainly a decision of state constitutional law as the majority maintains, the fact still remains that the rationale of Davis used to discover this new state constitutional right was premised entirely upon federal case law. There is certainly nothing in the constitutional thought of Davis that warrants placing the right of privacy on such a high pedestal, because as Davis implicitly acknowledges, the federal courts were the sole architects of our state house of privacy. The majority counters that some of these state protections are more broad than their corresponding federal counterparts, and consequently, the state right of privacy must also be more broad. The majority even goes so far as to count the words of various state and federal provisions, apparently on the novel constitutional theory that more words equal greater breadth. If word counting is the new method by which to determine the proper scope of our constitutional provisions, I tremble at the future of constitutional interpretation in this state. Perhaps this innovative school of thought needs further consideration before it is used as rationale to declare laws unconstitutional. After all, the anti-slavery clause of Article I, section 33 contains seven words less than the Thirteenth Amendment, and the double jeopardy provision of Article I, section 10 contains three words less than the similar clause in the Fifth Amendment. Even the language of Article I, section 27, upon which the majority fashions its inherent right of privacy, is shorter than its federal counterpart in the Third Amendment. Is this Court now to infer, based on this logic, that each of these state protections is theoretically less broad that their federal counterparts? I need hardly say that such a conclusion over stretches even the most elastic of imaginations. I take no issue with the ability of this Court to find, in the proper case, that greater protections exist under our State Constitution. There must be, however, some legitimate reason why this conclusion follows in a particular case, such as key differences in the historical background of the constitutional provisions, differences in the respective language of the provisions, or even key differences in the historical application of the clauses in Tennessee. Unless some legitimate difference between respective state and federal clauses can be found, courts engaging in such interpretive exploits cease to exercise Judgment and undertake to exercise Will instead. Cf. The Federalist No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton) (The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body. The observation, if it prove any thing, would prove that there ought to be no judges distinct from that body.). The courts of this state simply do not exercise legitimate judicial power when their decisions are grounded in nothing more than mere pronouncements or declarations. The only Tennessee case to actually hold that a state constitutional provision is more broad than its corresponding federal protection relied upon the actual language of the text. Our decision in State v. Jacumin, 778 S.W.2d 430 (Tenn.1989), provides an excellent example of when textual differences could support a finding that the Tennessee Constitution gives greater protection than a corresponding federal right. In Jacumin , this Court concluded that the language in Article I, section 7, which states that a warrant may not issue without evidence of the fact committed, weighed against adopting the totality of the circumstances test for examining the sufficiency of an affidavit used to support a search warrant. Instead, this Court retained the Aguilar-Spinelli two-pronged test, which specifically requires specific examination of the credibility and reliability of the informant. Other than Jacumin , however, I am unaware of any case in any area of law that actually holds that a state freedom is greater than the corresponding federal freedom. While this language appears in many of our cases, this Court has not seen fit to employ the possibility of greater protection in even one other case. [1] Accordingly, while the state protections may be greater in theory, they have certainly not received such attention in practice. As a practical matter, therefore, even if the state right of privacy is grounded in these other provisions of the Declaration of Rights, it still cannot be more broad than the corresponding federal right.