Opinion ID: 1918907
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government.

Text: The preservation of the constitution in its integrity and obedience to its mandates, is exacted alike from the legislative and the judicial departments of the government. Mayor of Mobile v. Stonewall Ins. Co., 53 Ala. 570, 575 (1875). Legislators take the same oath of office that judges and justices take  to support the Constitution of the United States, and Constitution of the State of Alabama. See § 279, Ala. Const. 1901. The Constitution provides that [e]ach house [of the legislature] shall have power to determine the rules of its own proceedings, and the judiciary should presume that the legislators comply with their oath of office when they determine and apply those rules. If the judiciary questions the legislature's declaration that Act No. 288 and Act No. 357 were validly enacted by the legislature, we would be demonstrating a lack of the respect due that coordinate branch of government. In Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 12 S.Ct. 495, 36 L.Ed. 294 (1892), The Tariff Act of October 1, 1890, was challenged as not being a law of the United States. [19] The Supreme Court of the United States stated: The signing by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and by the President of the Senate, in open session, of an enrolled bill, is an official attestation by the two houses of such bill as one that has passed Congress. It is a declaration by the two houses, through their presiding officers, to the President, that a bill, thus attested, has received in due form, the sanction of the legislative branch of the government, and that it is delivered to him in obedience to the constitutional requirement that all bills which pass Congress shall be presented to him. And when a bill, thus attested, receives his approval, and is deposited in the public archives, its authentication as a bill that has passed Congress should be deemed complete and unimpeachable. As the President has no authority to approve a bill not passed by Congress, an enrolled act in the custody of the Secretary of State, and having the official attestations of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, of the President of the Senate, and of the President of the United States, carries, on its face, a solemn assurance by the legislative and executive departments of the government, charged, respectively, with the duty of enacting and executing the laws, that it was passed by Congress. The respect due to coequal and independent departments requires the judicial department to act upon that assurance, and to accept, as having passed Congress, all bills authenticated in the manner stated: leaving the courts to determine, when the question properly arises, whether the act, so authenticated, is in conformity with the Constitution.  143 U.S. at 672, 12 S.Ct. 495 (emphasis added). The Supreme Court noted the uncertainty and instability that would result if every person were free to `hunt through the journals of a legislature to determine whether a statute, properly certified by the speaker of the house and the president of the senate, and approved by the governor, is a statute or not.' 143 U.S. at 677, 12 S.Ct. 495 (quoting Weeks v. Smith, 81 Me. 538, 547, 18 A. 325, 327 (1889)). We are here presented with a similar situation. In Baker v. Carr , the Supreme Court of the United States stated that the appropriateness of attributing finality to an action of one of the political departments is a dominant consideration in determining whether a question falls within the political-question category. 369 U.S. at 210, 82 S.Ct. 691. We, like the United States Supreme Court in Field v. Clark , are persuaded that uncertainty and instability would result if every person were free to hunt through the journals of a legislature to determine whether a statute, properly certified by the speaker of the house and the president of the senate, and approved by the governor, is a statute or not, 143 U.S. at 677, 12 S.Ct. 495 (quoting Weeks v. Smith, 81 Me. at 547, 18 A. at 327), and the internal proceedings of the legislature when passing a bill were to be subject to judicial challenge. The Supreme Court of the United States has explained that the language of Field v. Clark quoted above does not apply in the presence of a clear constitutional requirement that binds Congress. United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. 385, 392 n. 4, 110 S.Ct. 1964, 109 L.Ed.2d 384 (1990). In Munoz-Flores, the Supreme Court of the United States was presented with a challenge to a revenue-raising act alleged not to have originated in the House of Representatives, as required by Art. I, § 7, cl. 1, of the Constitution of the United States. In Field v. Clark , the Supreme Court had held that courts should not question an authentication by Congress that a bill has passed; that authentication should be deemed complete and unimpeachable. 143 U.S. at 672, 12 S.Ct. 495. However, the Origination Clause at issue in Munoz-Flores specifically mandates that all revenue-raising bills originate in the House, [20] and there is no question as to the meaning of the constitutional requirement that [a]ll Bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. We are not here presented with such a situation. In the case before us today, there is no clear constitutional provision binding the legislature to a certain manner of determining whether a majority of each house has voted in favor of a bill. Thus, the rationale of Field v. Clark is applicable, and the judiciary should not question the determination by the legislative branch of whether a bill was passed by the requisite majority vote of the house. To do so would be to demonstrate a lack of the respect due a coordinate branch of government. As Justice Scalia says in his concurrence in Munoz-Flores: Mutual regard between the coordinate branches, and the interest of certainty, both demand that official representations regarding such matters of internal process be accepted at face value. 495 U.S. at 410, 110 S.Ct. 1964 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). Because judicial review of the issue whether the bills that became Act No. 288 and Act No. 357 received the favorable vote of a majority of each house would express a lack of the respect due that coordinate branch of government, the question presented is nonjusticiable. We, therefore, decline to decide it.