Opinion ID: 1885183
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: The Structural Injunction

Text: A traditional injunction seeks to restore a party by ordering an offending party to cease some harmful behavior or to undo some harm done or to perform a specific legal duty. It is judicial and remedial in nature. It is designed to restore a party following some harm done or to ensure a discontinuation of some harmful action. Injunctions must be clear, and they must be confined to the wrong done. Typically in these traditional injunctions, the injunctive order requires or prohibits a discrete, unitary act; when the injunction is issued, the case is over. Dan B. Dobbs, The Law of Remedies 641 (2d ed.1993). The types of remedy imposed in equity funding cases in some states are so different that they have been termed structural injunctions, meaning that their purpose is to restructure a governmental institution, a power clearly outside the purview of the judiciary. In order to restructure the education system, the trial judge must restructure the relationship of the three branches of government. This de facto amending of the constitution usurps not only the powers of the legislative and executive departments, but also usurps a basic principle of the rule of law requiring the consent of the governed. The people of Alabama have not entrusted to the courts the executive and legislative powers, nor have they delegated to the courts the authority to make major structural changes to the Alabama Constitution. The trial judges in this case appear to have acted less as judicial officers and more as legislators, executive branch agents, and school superintendents. The school-equity funding cases involve injunctive remedies of a very different nature from those sought in the traditional lawsuit. The typical structural injunction is aptly described as a cycle in which the court issues a general injunctive decree, which is followed by disobedience or unsatisfactory compliance, which is followed by further hearings, and a supplemental decree stating in more detail what is required of the defendant. The cycle is then repeated several times, with each decree becoming more precise in its demands. Dobbs at 642. In this case there have already been numerous orders certified as final pursuant to Rule 54(b) or actually appealed. It is clear that the trial court expected to issue injunctions on a continuing basis, similar to a chief executive officer managing a business, or a superintendent managing a school system. Because those management decisions are based largely on policy judgments rather than on legal judgments, this Court would be called upon on appeal to perform the duties of a board of directors for a corporation or a school board for a school system rather than the duties of a court. And an appeal would presumably be available every time the trial court issued a remedy that it considered necessary for the equitable and efficient functioning of the state school system. Twenty-six years ago, Professor Abram Chayes made this observation: We are witnessing the emergence of a new model of civil litigation and, I believe, our traditional conception of adjudication and the assumptions upon which it is based provide an increasingly unhelpful, indeed misleading framework for assessing either the workability or the legitimacy of the roles of judge and court within this model. Abram Chayes, The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation, 89 Harv. L.Rev. 1281, 1284 (May 1976). It is not at all surprising to find that the traditional common-law doctrine of finality cannot be applied to a case like the Equity Funding Case. The workability of the rules of procedure are predicated on the distinction between law and politics, and upon the separation of the legislative, judicial, and executive powers.