Court Opinion

ID: 9779715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 00:39:26.865103+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:23:46.192770
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE STEIGMANN, specially concurring: This is a difficult case involving a problem of statutory construction that has arisen because the Act is poorly written. The majority does a good job of explaining how two reasonable interpretations of the Act could be made and then adopting the one it concluded is more persuasive. Although in my view this is a close case, I concur with that conclusion. I write specially because I disagree with the majority’s consideration of — much less reliance upon — “legislative history” when it is based upon the remarks of individual legislators. I reaffirm what I wrote for this court 18 years ago: “[legislators do not make laws by making speeches on the floor of the legislative chamber or by writing memos for committee meetings. They make laws by majority vote on a specifically worded bill that has been read three times before each house and distributed to each legislator. (Ill. Const. 1970, art. IV §§8(c), (d).) Neither the disclosed nor undisclosed intent of a legislator or lobbyist becomes law, only the bill as it reads when passed becomes law.” (Emphasis in original.) Town of the City of Bloomington v. Bloomington Township, 233 Ill. App. 3d 724, 736, 599 N.E.2d 62, 70 (1992). In my view, for the reasons stated by Justice Scalia, “legislative history,” commonly understood (as in this case) as the remarks of one or more legislators on the floor of the House or Senate, has no value whatsoever. “The greatest defect of legislative history is its illegitimacy. We are governed by laws, not by the intentions of legislators.” Conroy v. Aniskoff, 507 U.S. 511, 519, 123 L. Ed. 2d 229, 238, 113 S. Ct. 1562, 1567 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring). The Illinois House of Representatives has 118 members and the Illinois State Senate has 59. At the third reading of a specific bill in a given chamber, the members of that chamber vote yes or no (or present, if they wish) on that bill as it is proposed in its written form. A given state senator might read a particular bill in one way, while another state senator might interpret it differently. Although some senators might choose to take to the senate floor to announce their particular interpretations of the bill, the problems they hope it will address, or why they believe it should be enacted, experience demonstrates that at any given time on third reading in any legislative chamber, a large percentage of the members of that chamber are paying little attention, if any, to the remarks of their colleagues. They might be consulting among themselves about other legislative or political matters, speaking on the phone, working on their computers, or simply daydreaming. But by engaging in any of these activities, they are not delegating to their colleagues who choose to speak about the bill the authority to define what it means. Instead, the senators who choose not to speak on the bill are entirely justified in relying upon the words it contains, not the remarks of their colleagues construing those words in whatever fashion they wish. Another way to look at this issue is to ask this question: Are senators who disagree with the remarks of a particular senator on the third reading of a proposed bill obligated to rise to express that disagreement on the floor of the senate? And in the absence of their doing so, have they forfeited any later claim that the senator who rose to speak about the bill was not the authoritative voice of the senate on the matter? I have yet to encounter anyone, judge or legislator, who believes that such an obligation exists for senators who disagree with the remarks of some of their colleagues at third reading. Yet, if no such obligation exists, then why do we judges continue to view the few voices who speak in the legislative chamber as somehow authoritative on the subject? Further, what possible legitimacy can there be to viewing the remarks of a few members of the senate at third reading on a particular bill as authoritative and binding on members of the House of Representatives, who later voted on that same bill? Does anyone contend that somehow the views of the senators who spoke at third reading were necessarily going to be communicated to the members of the House of Representatives or repeated by some member of that body? When subjected to this analysis, the whole notion of “legislative history,” based upon the remarks of individual legislators, is simply nonsensical. And when we are looking to “legislative history” for guidance by examining the remarks of the opponents to a particular piece of legislation (which the majority does in this case), then “legislative history” has even less value than nothing. This is because legislators who oppose a particular bill might, intentionally or otherwise, attribute features to it that it does not possess. Giving these legislators the benefit of the doubt, they might legitimately fear that a certain result will ensue if the bill is passed, but many of their colleagues (especially those voting in favor of the bill) might very well disagree. And if they disagree, they are under no obligation to rise to say so, especially if they think they have the votes to pass the bill in the first place. Thus, the absence of rebuttal to the negative assessments of the bill that the majority in this case quotes is, in my judgment, totally without significance. I realize that (to date) the Supreme Court of Illinois has disagreed with my view of “legislative history.” See People v. Collins, 214 Ill. 2d 206, 214, 824 N.E.2d 262, 266 (2005) (“Where statutory language is ambiguous, *** we may consider other extrinsic aids for construction, such as legislative history and transcripts of legislative debates, to resolve the ambiguity”). Nonetheless, I hope that the supreme court might have occasion to reconsider the legitimacy of legislative history based upon the remarks of legislators (perhaps even in this case) and decide that it will no longer give legitimacy to this analysis. Although the law employs many legal fictions, they ought to be useful and legitimate. Using the remarks of individual legislators as a tool of legislative construction fails that test.