Opinion ID: 1095462
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Majority's Erroneous Approach to Construction

Text: On one point there seems no doubt. The clear wording of Miss. Code Ann. § 25-4-105(2) and (3) (Supp. 1986) renders lawful the public service of Sen. Anderson, of Reps. Frazier and Nunnally, and of Supervisor Killebrew. The case for affirmance must proceed on the premise that this statute is in relevant part unconstitutional. And, indeed, on page 46 the majority concludes that in part the statute is so defective. Its methodology en route is unusual. To begin with, the majority provides a discussion entitled Interpretation Guidelines. See pp. 694-695. I have described what is missing that ought be there in Part B above. I am as much disturbed by what I find there as by what is missing. I suppose the majority's sidestep of the accepted canons of construction applicable in cases of judicial review is to be found in its declaration that Section 109 is self-executing. (p. 694) What follows belies that declaration as the majority labels gray areas the two key parts of Section 109: interested, directly or indirectly and authorized, and proceeds with its alternately formalistic and realistic construction, depending upon who is the Appellant at risk, demonstrating quite convincingly that Section 109 is anything but self-executing. The majority does something else odd. Much is made of the failed 1984 and 1986 amendments to Section 109, (pp. 684-685, 695, 697, 698) as though somehow meaning has been accorded the wording that remains. I know of no legal doctrine or principle that accords weight to an unsuccessful effort to amend a law, and the majority cites none. I could as well argue that the voters have expressly ratified the circumstances of Sen. Anderson and Rep. Nunnally, for the fact that each was a teacher was well known to the voters at the time each last stood for reelection. [4] I make no such argument, of course, for I know it legally as specious as the majority's point. In the majority opinion, page 695, the interpretive process is turned on its head. We are admonished to construe Section 109 in accordance with the plain meaning of its words... . Page 695. So far so good. But the sentence ends ... so long as it bears some relationship to this purpose. Think about this. The majority says, follow the words of Section 109  so long as they bear some relationship to this purpose, and, presumably, then abandon (or expand) the section's wording. But to what purpose? Whence gathered? The error here  and it is quite fundamental  is in the premise that the purpose has some independent, prior extra-legal existence which modifies the plain meaning of the words of Section 109. What the majority is saying is that it accepts certain value judgments as having the power to modify the constitution, notwithstanding its inability to find those value judgments in that constitution. The majority drives home the point by its amazing injunction that the wording of Section 109 should not be given some abstractly valid meaning where this would cause grave risks to be imposed on the sound government of the people. This Court has authority to construe the constitution to proscribe the grave risks proscribed by the constitution and none other. What the majority does in the end is act upon its subjective perception of grave risks which (a) are not identified or proscribed by the plain wording of Section 109, (b) are not identified by reference to any authoritative source regarding the history of the wording of Section 109  not one word in the majority opinion points to any legitimate source of constitutional history suggesting that so much as a single delegate to the 1890 constitutional convention entertained the thought Section 109 means what we today say it means, and (c) are not supported by one word in the record before us. The majority's reading of Section 109 is based in quicksand. My point is simple. We begin the enterprise of interpreting the constitution with its ratified meaning. We give that wording the most enlightened and coherent reading it may be given. That reading must not only fit the wording, it should provide the best fit. And that fit must be tailored today. But we dishonor the constitution qua law when we resort to subjective value judgments and ephemeral notions of grave risks which may not be found contemplated or incorporated within a fair reading of the constitution. This is particularly so when identification of and proof of the reality of those risks is found in no authoritative historical source nor in the evidence before us or within our judicial knowledge. Finally, one of the great and seemingly eternal wars among legal scholars has been fought between so-called formalists or objectivists, on the one side, and realists or criticalists, on the other. Admittedly oversimplified, the central issue in that war has been whether law should be seen as a mass of hard edged, case decider rules which once identified and applied, produce automatic (self-executing) results, or is law a sociological phenomenon practiced through identification of and balancing of interests and the exercise of judgment and discretion. Legal scholars on each side have expended passion and risked careers and professional reputations in this war. For the most part the two camps have found themselves on common turf about as often as Arab and Israeli, and about as congenially, although over a lifetime an occasional ambivalent jurist has waivered between the magnetic tensions of the two poles. All of which is to provide context for my thought that the majority's opinion is striking in its formalistic march up the hill to affirm the cases of Appellants Anderson, Frazier, Nunnally, followed by a march back down to realism in the case of Nunnally's wife, then back up the hill to formalism to nail Killebrew and, back down to realism for Logan. I don't think I've ever seen such in a single opinion, nor as much.