Opinion ID: 1179764
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Limits Upon Sua Sponte Consideration Of Constitutional And Public-Law Issues

Text: The dissent concludes Respondent's conduct should be viewed as neither champertous or against public policy, nor unethical per se, because Rule 1.8(e) contravenes state and federal fundamental law. While this position is not utterly without merit, I cannot join today in calling for Rule 1.8(e)'s retrospective invalidation. Sua sponte consideration of a constitutional question which was neither advanced by the briefs nor preserved in the record offends two cardinal precepts of constitutional adjudication: (1) a court should never decide a fundamental-law question in advance of strict necessity nor formulate a norm of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied [5] and (2) a court should not overstep the limits of the Reynolds v. Special Indemnity Fund [6] exception. Reynolds teaches that if in a public-law controversy the aggrieved party's brief advances the wrong reason for reversal, the reviewing court is free to grant corrective relief from the urged error on an applicable theory chosen sua sponte  i.e., a theory that supports the assigned error but was neither advanced below nor on appeal and is dispositive of the issue raised by the aggrieved party. Reynolds is inapposite here. Our Reynolds freedom to choose sua sponte the dispositive public-law theory when a wrong one is proffered does not extend to identifying a constitutional flaw [7] not urged by the aggrieved party either here or below. Unlike jurisdictional infirmities, into whose presence we must examine even when they are not urged upon us by the parties, [8] constitutional flaws may not be corrected in the appellate process sua sponte. Respondent entered into a stipulation with the Bar, which neither questions the outer limit of Rule 1.8(e)'s champerty definition [9] nor its applicability to the instant disciplinary proceeding. Champerty  qua criminal offense  is regulated by statute, 21 O.S. 1991 § 554. [10] It is also an ethics violation under Rule 1.8(e). [11] Conduct falling within the purview of § 554 is punishable as a misdemeanor; acts or omissions which come within the ambit of Rule 1.8(e) constitute a disciplinary infraction. [12] The constitutional infirmities pressed by the dissent went unnoticed and unchampioned both here and below. [13] We do not have a roving commission to invalidate the Bar prosecutor's plea bargains based on an uninvoked constitutional infirmity. Absent a finely targeted challenge by the accused legal practitioner, I would not test here Rule 1.8(e)'s fundamental-law or public-policy orthodoxy. Furthermore, in the face of the prosecuted lawyer's silence, I cannot today decide to what extent, if any, the court is bound by the broadly articulated champerty prohibition in § 554. While in crafting a Bar ethics rule we are prone to view ourselves as entirely free from the restraint of that penal statute  because in regulating the practice of law and the conduct of lawyers this court casts itself in the status of an exclusive constitutional law-making body [14]  an uncompromisingly absolutist position may be fraught with appreciable danger. [15]