Opinion ID: 1426747
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Original Understanding of Police Power

Text: As evidenced by treatises, legal precedent, and complementary constitutional provisions, the original understanding of police power prevalent and popular at the dawn of our constitution in 1889 defined the legitimate role of the State as the protector of persons and property. This understanding is best summarized in the Latin maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. [12] Thus police power, as originally understood, conveyed not only a grant of authority, but its limitation as well. Historically it must be concluded such was the understanding even prior to statehood in Washington territorial days as the Territorial Court interpreted the Organic Act which granted the territorial legislative power extending to all rightful subjects of legislation, not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States (9 Stat. 325, § 6 (1848)) to imply that there are some subjects of legislation that are not rightful. Maynard v. Valentine, 2 Wash. Terr. 3, 14, 3 P. 195 (1880). [13] Few men were closer to birth of the Washington Constitution than Theodore Lamm Stiles, first elected to serve on the Washington State Supreme Court by the same electorate which ratified the constitution itself in 1889. Justice Stiles played a leading role at the constitutional convention, chairing the committee on county, township, and municipal organizations while also serving on the rules, judiciary, and public lands committees. He soon developed a reputation as a scholar and as the state's leading authority on the Washington Constitution. Charles H. Sheldon, The Washington High Bench: A Biographical History of the Supreme Court, 1889-1991, at 327 (1992). In an address to the Washington State Bar Association, Justice Stiles set forth, in colorful language, that founder's commitment to jealously maintain traditional limitations of police regulation against threats of radical expansion: Laws have been passed in one state and another abridging the right of contract, the right to sell merchandise, the right to labor upon public works, the right to labor more than a certain number of hours, the right to freely come and go, the right to pursue legitimate trades, and a mass of others. Some of these laws go directly to the point, but the majority proceed by indirection. Too many succeed in evading the decree of unconstitutionality and bear oppressively on natural rights. The selfish interest of classes ever anxious to push on their own fortunes, reckless of what destruction is wrought to others, is their moving cause. Legislatures, pliantly serviceable to the demands of influential cliques and unchecked by weak-kneed governors, spread them on the statute books, and there they stand, discouraging prophecies of the decadence of popular rights under democracy. They hide in swarms, behind the newly coined phrase, police power, and that other more venerable phrase, the public welfare, both of which, like public policy, are often, if one may use such an expression, liveries of heaven stolen to serve the devil in. C.S. Reinhart, History of the Supreme Court of the Territory and State of Washington 49-50 (n.d.). A further exemplar and early explanation of the limited nature of the police power is aptly set forth in City of Seattle v. Ford, 144 Wash. 107, 111, 257 P. 243 (1927): It is to be observed, therefore, that the police power of the government, as understood in the constitutional law of the United States, is simply the power of government to establish provisions for the enforcement of the common as well as civil-law maxim, sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. ... Any law which goes beyond that principle, which undertakes to abolish rights, the exercise of which does not involve an infringement of the rights of others, or to limit the exercise of rights beyond what is necessary to provide for the public welfare and the general security, cannot be included in the police power of the government. It is a governmental usurpation, and violates the principles of abstract justice, as they have been developed under our republican institutions. . . . . To justify the State in thus interposing its authority in behalf of the public, it must appear, first, that the interests of the public generally, as distinguished from those of a particular class, require such interference; and, second, that the means are reasonably necessary for the accomplishment of the purpose and not unduly oppressive upon individuals.....[The Legislature's] determination as to what is a proper exercise of its police powers, is not final or conclusive, but is subject to the supervision of the courts. Id. at 111-12, 257 P. 243 (emphasis added) (quoting Christopher G. Tiedeman, A Treatise on State and Federal Control of Persons and Property in the United States 4-5 (1900)). Recognition of the limitation of a state's plenary police power is further evidenced in the earliest history of our nation. See, e.g., Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 387-88, 1 L.Ed. 648 (1798) (Chase, J., seriatim ) (I cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of a state legislature, or that it is absolute and without control; although its authority should not be expressly restrained by the constitution, or fundamental law of the state.... The purposes for which men enter into society will determine the nature and terms of the social compact; and as they are the foundation of the legislative power, they will decide what are the proper objects of it.... There are acts which the federal, or state legislature cannot do, without exceeding their authority.). In fact, this recognition predates the establishment of the American Republic. Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 8-1, at 560 (2d ed.1988). The majority notes that the scope of the state's police power has not declined. Majority at 280. I would not argue with that assertion; however, the problem is more nearly the opposite. Without benefit of any formal amendment to the constitutional text, we have allowed police power, as a substantive limitation on governmental authority, to significantly erode from its point of origin: [14] While originally it was used as a rule to indicate the protective function of the government, its development of late years has been in the direction of the function of the state that cares for the general welfare, City of Tacoma v. Boutelle, 61 Wash. 434, 443, 112 P. 661 (1911), and we have opined it is not a rule, it is an evolution, allowing its redefinition as often as changed conditions require or compel. State v. Mountain Timber Co., 75 Wash. 581, 588, 135 P. 645 (1913), aff'd, 243 U.S. 219, 37 S.Ct. 260, 61 L.Ed. 685 (1917). Notwithstanding, we have also occasionally [15] repaired to its origin: The germ of police power, in so far as it assumes to interfere with private rights, is to be found in the power of the state to suppress nuisances. This right was forced upon the state in the exercise of its functions, or rather duty, to preserve that equilibrium of relative right which must be preserved wherever society is organized. Id. at 584, 135 P. 645. Such equilibrium is the process by which the rights of one individual are protected against the trespasses of another. This original understanding of the police power, as an expression of the core but limited governmental purpose and function to protect lives and property, is certainly consistent with, and confirmed by, Constitution article I, section 1, which similarly provides: Governments ... are established to protect and maintain individual rights. Even under the most expansive definitions of potential plenary power it is clear that where, as here, the acts of the county exceed the State's constitutional delegation the act nevertheless exceeds legitimate authority. See, e.g., United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 319-20, 57 S.Ct. 216, 81 L.Ed. 255 (1936) (noting the plenary power of the president in international relations like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.); Southcenter Joint Venture v. National Democratic Policy Comm., 113 Wash.2d 413, 443, 780 P.2d 1282 (1989) (State's plenary power as sovereign is limited by the state's own constitution). Applying the principle of sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas to the case at bar we would ask: What individual right is abridged by the continued use of personal watercraft on the marine waters of San Juan County?