Court Opinion

ID: 9684531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:00:01.60954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:56.790722
License: Public Domain

LAMBERT, Concurring Chief Justice.
My colleagues, Justice Johnstone, Justice Cooper, Justice Scott, and Justice Roach, have each written an opinion in this case. Without any doubt, all of their opinions are the product of superb scholarship, deep respect for constitutional principles, and personal integrity in the decision-making process. In the end, by a vote of 5-2, this Court has determined that the decision of the Franklin Circuit Court denying Dana Seum Stephenson a seat in the Kentucky Senate should be affirmed. While some will disagree with the outcome, there should be no doubt that every relevant argument has been honestly considered by the seven fallible human beings who sit on the Supreme Court of Kentucky
A guiding principle of American law was given to us by “the great Chief Justice”1 John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison.2 During the infancy of this nation, Chief Justice Marshall set us on a course from which no political body or institution has seriously deviated for more than two hundred years. Only the words of Chief Justice Marshall are adequate as an exposition of this organic principle:
It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.... This is of the very essence of judicial duty.3
The Supreme Court of Kentucky is the final arbiter of Kentucky constitutional law.4
We have now done our “judicial duty” and the duty to go forward with the process of government is upon others. Responsible officials will reject any notion of defiance or retaliation against the judiciary, for such action would be an attack upon the Constitution itself. Judges, legislators, and governors come and go, but the Constitution remains. Public officials must honor conclusive constitutional interpretation regardless of the depth of their disagreement with a particular decision, for anything else would fundamentally alter the constitutional allocation of governmental responsibility.
Most Kentuckians will not understand the esoteric concepts herein debated in this Court’s opinions. Justiciability, textual commitment, stare decisis, and other legal terms of art will not be generally understood, but persons with even a casual interest in public affairs will understand that the rule of law must be observed. Our national tradition compels such observance even in the most divisive of legal contro*176versies. Illustrative of this, the President of the United States yielded upon a determination by the Supreme Court that the Oval Office tape recordings of presidential conversations had to be surrendered to the special prosecutor.5 With full knowledge that such tape recordings would likely lead to his impeachment, President Nixon surrendered the tapes. More recently, despite a widely held view that the Supreme Court of the United States had exceeded its jurisdiction in halting the recounting of votes in Florida, thus assuring the election of President Bush,6 Vice President Gore, out of respect for the Court’s 5-4 opinion, conceded the election.
As divisive as this controversy has been, the legal and constitutional process has been honored.
GRAVES, J., joins this concurring opinion.

. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. U.S., 379 U.S. 241, 254, 85 S.Ct. 348, 13 L.Ed.2d 258 (1964).

. 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803).

. Id. at 177.

. See Ky. Const. § 109.

. U.S. v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974).

. Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 121 S.Ct. 525, 148 L.Ed.2d 388 (2000).