Opinion ID: 1294897
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: justiciable question

Text: The Dostert majority should not have considered the constitutionality of the judicial retirement system because the nature of the judicial retirement system was not a justiciable controversy in the case before the Court. In Mainella v. Board of Trustees of Policemen's Pension or Relief Fund of City of Fairmont, 126 W.Va. 183, 185-86, 27 S.E.2d 486, 487-88 (1943), we said: Courts are not constituted for the purpose of making advisory decrees or resolving academic disputes. The pleadings and evidence must present a claim of legal right asserted by one party and denied by the other before jurisdiction of a suit may be taken. Since President Washington, in 1793, sought and was refused legal advice from the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, courtsstate and federalhave continuously maintained that they will not give advisory opinions. [15] And it is also well settled that [l]itigants may challenge the constitutionality of a statute only insofar as it affects them. [16] Art. III of the Constitution of the United States is sometimes cited as the source of the limitations of the judicial power to cases and controversies. [17] The justiciable controversy requirement in West Virginia is usually found in cases arising under the declaratory judgment act (even though the declaratory judgment act does not mandate an actual dispute or controversy), but the actual dispute or controversy rule applies to all West Virginia judicial proceedings. Dostert, of course, was not even a declaratory judgment action. [18] The issue in Dostert was, simply, whether Judge Dostert should be suspended pending final disposition of the judicial disciplinary proceedings against him. Judge Dostert resolved that issue by agreeing to refrain from conducting judicial duties until the final resolution of the judicial disciplinary proceedings. [19] Clearly, no justiciable controversy existed at that time involving Judge Dostert's right to receive retirement benefits. [20] The majority in Dostert created the judicial retirement constitutional issue by ordering its own administrative director to intervene in the case. Through the use of information outside of the record before the Court, the majority forged a constitutional issue. In doing so, the court paved the way for an advisory opinion on an issue that was at most a mere contingent possibility. [21] There was no present controversy nor present necessity of requiring the construction of the judicial retirement statute. [22] We recognize that in cases which are primarily concerned with a declaration of rights, we retain the prerogative to raise related issues on our own initiative. But Dostert was not such a case. We had no right to raise any issues on our own initiative or to offer our advisory opinion on what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts because there was no real issue in the case to which tangential issues might reasonably relate.