Opinion ID: 848684
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Public Use as a Legal Term of Art

Text: The primary objective in interpreting a constitutional provision is to determine the text's original meaning to the ratifiers, the people, at the time of ratification. [44] This rule of common understanding has been described by Justice COOLEY in this way: A constitution is made for the people and by the people. The interpretation that should be given it is that which reasonable minds, the great mass of the people themselves, would give it. `For as the Constitution does not derive its force from the convention which framed, but from the people who ratified it, the intent to be arrived at is that of the people, and it is not to be supposed that they have looked for any dark or abstruse meaning in the words employed, but rather that they have accepted them in the sense most obvious to the common understanding, and ratified the instrument in the belief that that was the sense designed to be conveyed.'[ [45] ] In short, the primary objective of constitutional interpretation is to realize the intent of the people by whom and for whom the constitution was ratified. This Court typically discerns the common understanding of constitutional text by applying each term's plain meaning at the time of ratification. [46] But if the constitution employs technical or legal terms of art, we are to construe those words in their technical, legal sense. [47] Justice COOLEY has justified this principle of constitutional interpretation in this way: [I]t must not be forgotten, in construing our constitutions, that in many particulars they are but the legitimate successors of the great charters of English liberty, whose provisions declaratory of the rights of the subject have acquired a well-understood meaning, which the people must be supposed to have had in view in adopting them. We cannot understand these provisions unless we understand their history, and when we find them expressed in technical words, and words of art, we must suppose these words to be employed in their technical sense. When the law speaks of an ex post facto law, it means a law technically known by that designation; the meaning of the phrase having become defined in the history of constitutional law, and being so familiar to the people that it is not necessary to employ language of a more popular character to designate it. The technical sense in these cases is the sense popularly understood, because that is the sense fixed upon the words in legal and constitutional history where they have been employed for the protection of popular rights.[ [48] ] Thus, in Silver Creek, for example, we determined that the phrase just compensation was a legal term of art of enormous complexity, and that its meaning could be discerned only by canvassing legal precedent on just compensation before 1963 to determine how an individual versed in the law before the Constitution's ratification would understand that concept. [49] Indeed, we have held that the whole of art. 10, § 2 has a technical meaning that must be discerned by examining the purpose and history of the power of eminent domain. [50] Public use is a legal term of art every bit as complex as just compensation. It has reappeared as a positive limit on the state's power of eminent domain in Michigan's constitutions of 1850, [51] 1908, [52] and 1963, [53] and each invocation of public use has been followed by litigation over the precise contours of this language. Consequently, this Court has weighed in repeatedly on the meaning of this legal term of art. We can uncover the common understanding of art. 10, § 2 only by delving into this body of case law, and thereby determining the common understanding among those sophisticated in the law at the time of the Constitution's ratification. This case does not require that this Court cobble together a single, comprehensive definition of public use from our pre-1963 precedent and other relevant sources. The question presented here is a fairly discrete one: are the condemnation of defendants' properties and the subsequent transfer of those properties to private entities pursuant to the Pinnacle Project consistent with the common understanding of public use at ratification? For the reasons stated below, we answer that question in the negative.