Opinion ID: 1439615
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: outdated, outweighed and unjustified reincarnation of past mistakes

Text: United States Supreme Court Justice John Marshall wrote: In the 3d vol. of his Commentaries (p. 23), Blackstone states two cases in which a remedy is afforded by mere operation of law. In all other cases, he says, it is a general and indisputable rule, that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy by suit, or action at law, whenever that right is invaded. And afterwards (p. 109, of the same vol.), he says, I am next to consider such injuries as are cognisable by the courts of the common law. And herein I shall, for the present, only remark, that all possible injuries whatsoever, that did not fall within the exclusive cognisance of either the ecclesiastical, military or maritime tribunals, are, for that very reason, within the cognisance of the common-law courts of justice; for it is a settled and invariable principle in the laws of England, that every right, when withheld, must have a remedy, and every injury its proper redress. The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right. If this obloquy is to be cast on the jurisprudence of our country, it must arise from the peculiar character of the case. It behooves us, then, to inquire whether there be in its composition any ingredient which shall exempt it from legal investigation, or exclude the injured party from legal redress. In pursuing this inquiry, the first question which presents itself is, whether this can be arranged with that class of cases which come under the description of damnum absque injuria; a loss without an injury. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 163-64, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803). It was Langford v. United States, 11 Otto 341, 101 U.S. 341, 343, 25 L.Ed. 1010 (1879) which rejected the old English notion of the royalty that the King can do no wrong as a basis for creating immunity. It is not easy to see how the first proposition can have any place in our system of government. We have no king to whom it can be applied. Id. at 343. In United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220, 1 S.Ct. 240, 260, 27 L.Ed. 171 (1882), limited to unconstitutional taking sub nom. Malone v. Bowdoin, 369 U.S. 643, 82 S.Ct. 980, 8 L.Ed.2d 168 (1962), that court said: Courts of justice are established, not only to decide upon the controverted rights of the citizens as against each other, but also upon rights in controversy between them and the government; and the docket of this court is crowded with controversies of the latter class. The extended dissent in Lee was not to be lightly relinquished. Lee was followed by Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U.S. 349, 353, 27 S.Ct. 526, 527, 51 L.Ed. 834 (1907), where Justice Holmes asserted: A sovereign is exempt from suit, not because of any formal conception or obsolete theory, but on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends.       A suit presupposes that the defendants are subject to the law invoked. Of course it cannot be maintained unless they are so. But that is not the case with a territory of the United States, because the Territory itself is the fountain from which rights ordinarily flow. Any vision that law is logic is dispelled by a journey through the forensic history of immunity case law. The spectacle of misapplied dictum and unjustified legal theories demonstrates that immunity exists despite the fact that it is not historically justified or moralistically sustainable. There is no subject in the law which has accumulated such weight of scholastic condemnation for unnumbered decades. Yet like a spore or a virus, it refuses to die. The curiosity of immunity in a democratic society is that it survives in the fashion it has, and now in Wyoming, mutates to redevelop without scholarship or logical justification, except a continued repetition as if by restatement the initial concept achieves a validity unsupportable within the concept itself. Characterized from the Men of Devon, [12] the menu provided is that somehow in logic there is no harm unless a remedy exists. Pain, bodily damage or death as an activity only exists in the actuality of the adjudicatory system if the wrongdoer, as in immunity, the instrumentalities of the state, can be called to respond for fault. It is curious that those who rail against the state, in favor of the individual, become strangly silent when that individual who has been maimed by the government asks for justice. Their slogan no doubt becomes, Ask not what bills your country can pay for you, ask what bills you can pay for your country. The critical failure is the misunderstanding of the essence of a free society and the individual's right within the society to be protected from unjustified harm by the government which those individuals have created and now maintain. [13] The erroneous historical basis and ignoble moral justification of the immunities has given this parcel of the body of the law the heaviest criticism and disapproval of any subject within modern jurisprudence. Described at best as an abnormality or absurdity, it is more commonly recognized as an anachronism for modern society. As a result of feudal theory, then, we have the basis for much of the present-day theory of irresponsibility of the State. This theory, holding that the King can do no wrong; that he is irresponsible before the law of man; that he cannot be sued; but that the right of supplication exists, bears a close resemblance to certain contemporary ideas which will be discussed presently. In order to explain and justify the important changes that resulted from the downfall of the feudal system, with the waning power of the great nobles and the increased power of the sovereign, ingenious doctrines were developed by political theorists, theologians, and judges. The chief of these defined sovereignty, personified the Crown as the state, and applied the principle that the King can do no wrong. Blachly and Oatman, Approaches to Governmental Liability in Tort: A Comparative Study, 9 Law and Contemp.Probs. 181, 183 (1942). It surely is established for immunity, both governmental and sovereign, that the head waters of its utilization and retention is not logic  it is inertia, greed and political philosophy. For a wide variety of reasons, its residual remnants and contrails outlast modern theories of social responsibility which have invoked social security, worker's compensation and unemployment compensation, not to mention aid to dependent children, guarantees for educational opportunity, as well as equal opportunities and confined rights of all citizens to vote. Immunity beyond that necessary for ministerial, discretionary, legislative, or judicial functions is no more than a reincarnation of past mistakes  now both legislative and judicial.