Court Opinion

ID: 9669103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:39:36.824363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:52.484134
License: Public Domain

BIERY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the opinion of Chief Justice Reeves. As set forth by the majority in Section C of the opinion, the constitutionality of a statute must be viewed from the perspective of whether the means are appropriate and reasonably necessary to accomplish the objective and whether the statute operates in an arbitrary or unjust manner. Ultimately, such a decision is a judgment call upon which reasonable minds will differ. As stated by Justice Cardozo, the social interest served by symmetry or certainty (in this case exemplified by the new Act) must be balanced against the social interest (and in this case the constitutional interest) served by equity and fairness or other elements of social welfare. In making those decisions which seek to insure a level playing field and in drawing those constitutional lines, we do so not in a vacuum, but “from experience and study and reflection; in brief, from life itself.” Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process, p. 112-113 (1921). In the many months of the pendency of this appeal, that process has faithfully been adhered to and the result has indeed been that reasonable minds have reached different conclusions about the new Act in relation to the Texas Constitution. In that spirit, I write to complete the partial historical review begun in the opinion of Justice Peeples.
With reference to the issue of attorneys’ fees (Section G of the majority and Section F of Justice Peeples’ dissent), I agree with Justice Peeples there is nothing constitutionally infirm in the 25% limitation in the new Act, similar to that of the old Act. The infirmity lies in the labyrinth of procedural hoops of the new Act, detailed by the majority, through which injured workers must jump thus creating an unconstitutionally un-level playing field violative of equal protection. For a historical analogy, we need look only as far as the promise of the right to vote realistically abridged by the barriers of poll taxes and literacy tests. See Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 86 S.Ct. 1079, 16 L.Ed.2d 169 (1966).
While we in the judicial branch should, and do, give great deference to the enactments of the legislative branch, we must never lose sight of the genius of this experiment in self-government: that the people are sovereign, and the will of the sovereign people, as expressed in their constitution and any amendments the people choose to make, is superior to any enactment of the legislative body. “[W]here the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter *107rather than the former.” The FEDERALIST No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton).
Although much mischief was done in the name of substantive due process, the idea that one may not take another’s property without a justifying public purpose is a fundamental liberty. In speaking of the limitations of governmental power to deal with private property, the first Chief Justice Phillips said:
The powers of government, under our system, are nowhere absolute. They are but grants of authority from the people, and are limited to their true purposes. The fundamental rights of the people are inherent and have not been yielded to governmental authority. They are the subjects of individual authority. Constitutional powers can never transcend constitutional rights. The police power is subject to the limitations imposed by the Constitution upon every power of government; and it will not be suffered to invade or impair the fundamental liberties of the citizen, those natural rights which are the chief concern of the Constitution and for whose protection it was ordained by the people. All grants of power are to be interpreted in the light of the maxims of Magna Charta and the Common Law as transmuted into the Bill of Rights; and those things which those maxims forbid cannot be regarded as within any grant of authority made by the people to their agents.
Spann v. City of Dallas, 111 Tex. 350, 235 S.W. 513, 515 (1921) (citations omitted).
That such principles remain vital today is illustrated by Eggemeyer v. Eggemeyer, 554 S.W.2d 137 (Tex.1977). There the supreme court, speaking through Justice Pope, held that our due course of law provision prohibits the transfer of one spouse’s separate property to the other spouse in a divorce action. Justice Pope said:
The protection of one’s rights to own property is said to be one of the most important purposes of government. That right has been described as fundamental, natural, inherent, inalienable, not derived from the legislature and as preexisting even constitutions. Article I, section 19, of the Texas Constitution explains that no citizen of this state shall be deprived of his property except by the due course of the law of the land. The due course that protects citizens requires not only procedural but also substantive due course.
Id. at 140 (citations and footnote omitted). See also Texas Power & Light Co. v. City of Garland, 431 S.W.2d 511, 518 (Tex.1968) (ordinance interfering with a private utility’s franchise rights stricken); Falfwrrias Creamery Co. v. City of Laredo, 276 S.W.2d 351, 355 (Tex.Civ.-App.San Antonio 1955, writ refd n.r.e.) (portion of milk inspection ordinance stricken as unduly burdensome in light of ends served).
Justice Pope relied in this opinion upon a statement by Justice Brandéis, acknowledged by the dissent as one of the great justices, who, speaking for a unanimous court, said, “[Tjhis court has many times warned that one person’s property may not be taken for the benefit of another private person without a justifying public purpose, even though compensation be paid.” Thompson v. Consolidated Gas Co., 300 U.S. 55, 80, 57 S.Ct. 364, 376, 81 L.Ed. 510, 524 (1936).
We do not defend the use of substantive due process or any other constitutional doctrine as a subterfuge for the implementation of a court’s own social agenda. And yet neither are we, as an intermediate court, free to ignore supreme court mandated constitutional doctrine to satisfy our own philosophy of judicial restraint, our own notions of social policy, or our own selective view of history. This intermediate appellate court must apply the provisions of our constitution as interpreted by our supreme court.
Substantive due process was used by the United States Supreme Court to overturn legislative enactments on the ground they had deprived litigants of property rights without the benefit of due process.1 See e.g. *108Adkins v. Children’s Hasp., 261 U.S. 525, 43 S.Ct. 394, 67 L.Ed. 785 (1923) (struck down a District of Columbia minimum wage law for women as a violation of liberty of contract under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment); Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259 U.S. 20, 42 S.Ct. 449, 66 L.Ed. 817 (1922) (overturned Congress’s second attempt to regulate child labor, this time using the taxing power, by adding a 10% tax on the net profits of any firm employing child labor; court declared the act an unconstitutional invasion of the reserved powers of the states); Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, 38 S.Ct. 529, 62 L.Ed. 1101 (1918) (overturned the Child Labor Act of 1916, which prohibited the passage in interstate commerce of goods produced by child labor, as an unconstitutional invasion of state police power); Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937 (1905) (overturned a New York law limiting the working day in the baking industry to ten hours on substantive due process and liberty of contract grounds). Carried to its logical conclusion, substantive due process would not only allow the exploitation of child labor, but, presumably, would overrule legislation prohibiting the ownership of other human beings because such legislation would be a violation of property rights.
Substantive due process is not a part of our federal constitutional jurisprudence today2 and federal substantive due process is not the basis of our opinion in this case. Our decision in this ease does not turn on property rights, liberty of contract, or other catchphrases of substantive due process. Rather, we reviewed the statute in question as it impacts several provisions written by the sovereign people in the Texas Bill of Rights, including equal protection, due course of law, right to jury trial, and open courts. We found many parts of the statute to be lacking by virtue of their failure to provide an adequate substitute for the relinquishment of workers’ common law rights, and in their unreasonableness and arbitrariness when balanced against the purpose of the statute. If historical common law rights are to be abrogated by legislative action, it seems axiomatic that such regulatory schemes should provide a level playing field for all those affected by the statute, and fulfill the covenant in our social contract that all will be treated fairly. Thus, our intellectual parentage is not the federal substantive due process artifice abused by the early twentieth century Supreme Court, but rather, fundamental principles woven into the constitutional fabric of Texas by the sovereign people. Those principles and our history seek not to make democracy mere majoritarianism, but to strike a reasonable balance between the rights of the majority and adequate protection for those who are not a part of the power structure or the majority. Lest we forget, it was the powerless few who fled the despotism of Europe to establish a more just society which attempts to build that level playing field for the few as well as the many. Some of the mechanisms employed are trial by jury, due course of the rule of law, and equal protection, all of which we reaffirm today.
Can a legislature substitute its will, through statute, for that of the sovereign people as expressed in the Constitution? Is the legislature to be the final arbiter of its own powers? Are legislative enactments, which transgress constitutional prohibitions, nevertheless obligatory? In answering these questions in the negative and in speaking against domination by the majority, James *109Madison said, “The accumulation of all powers ... in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The FEDERALIST No. 47.
The historical intent of the sovereign people was to create an inefficient system of government established on a theory of limited powers and checks and balances. No one branch of government could assume too much power. To Madison “the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct.” Id. That legislatures diffused power among a number of members rather than a few, or that their offices were elective rather than appointive or hereditary, provided no comfort. “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for....” Thomas JeffeRson, Notes on the State of Virginia, in WRITINGS 245 (Library of America 1984) (emphasis in original). In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville saw that democracy is potentially more threatening to liberty than monarchy or aristocracy: “[A] king’s power is physical only, controlling actions but not influencing desires, whereas the majority is invested with both physical and moral authority, which acts as much upon the will as upon behavior and at the same moment prevents both the act and the desire to do it.” Alexis de Tocqueville, DEMOCRACY in America, 254 (J.P. Mayer, ed. & George Lawrence, trans. Perennial Library 1969). “[Democratic despotism] would be more widespread and milder; it would degrade men rather than torment them.” Id. at 691.
The primary cheek on legislative encroachment, short of the ballot box and executive veto, is the principle of judicial review. Alexander Hamilton set forth perhaps the most compelling argument for the absolute necessity of judicial review in a government of limited powers:
No legislative act ... contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid, ⅛ ⅞ ⅜ ⅜ V ⅜* ⅞*
[T]he courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the law is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, ... the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both_
The Federalist No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton) (emphasis added).
The dissent contends our opinion prevents the people, acting through their legislative representatives, from governing. Yet when a legislature acts in excess of its constitutional authority, it is not the people who govern; it is the people who are governed. The legislature is not the people, but the servant of the people, acting in their behalf within a limited, delegated authority.
These principles were recognized by Chief Justice John Marshall who echoed Hamilton in his effort to erect our constitutional jurisprudence on the foundation of judicial review. He boldly declared that “an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Craneh) 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803). It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Id. Those who controvert the principle that the constitution is paramount law would give to the legislature “a practical and real omnipotence and would reduce to nothing what we have *110deemed the greatest improvement on political institutions, a written constitution.” Id. at 178.3
Could it be the intention of those who gave this power, to say that in using it the constitution should not be looked into? That a ease arising under the constitution should be decided without examining the instrument under which it arises?
This is too extravagant to be maintained.
Id. at 179.
If we are to take our constitutional duties seriously we cannot dismiss due course of law, equal protection, and the right to trial by jury guaranteed by the sovereign people to themselves as mere “garb,” smoke-screen, or window dressing. Our Texas forbearers were rebelliously emphatic in exercising their sovereignty and placing great value on these liberties:
To guard against transgressions of the high powers herein delegated, we declare that everything in this “Bill of Rights” is excepted out of the general powers of government, and shall forever remain inviolate, and all laws contrary thereto, or to the following provisions, shall be void.
Tex. Const, art. I, § 29.
Were we to be easily seduced into deferring to the legislature in all matters of economic regulation, and were we to fail to review honestly and objectively the constitutionality of any piece of legislation when called upon to do so, we would abdicate our duty to honor the Constitution above any act in conflict with it, and we would repudiate our oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” that Constitution. Tex. Const, art. XVI, § 1. If the sovereign people of Texas wish to relinquish the fundamental rights of trial by jury, equal protection, due course of law, and open courts, there is, under the rule of our law, an amendment process by which the sovereign people can act. Unless and until the sovereign people do act, we are bound by our oath and the rule of law to uphold and defend those constitutional guarantees.
CHAPA and GARCIA, JJ., join.

. Between 1889 and 1918, the Supreme Court approved the exercise of state police power in 369 of 422 cases in which it was challenged. 2 Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 741 (1922). From 1790 through 1972, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional only 106 federal statutes and 803 state statutes out of thousands passed. Jethro K. Lie*108berman. The Enduring Constitution, A Bicentennial Perspective at 354 (West 1987). After 1941, the totals are only 36 federal and 145 state statutes declared unconstitutional. Id. Notwithstanding the demise of substantive due process, the United States Supreme Court has not abandoned its judicial review responsibilities, nor, on the other hand, has it failed in the vast majority of cases to give due deference to legislative enactments.

. An exception to this general rule exists, to a limited extent, in civil rights cases. See Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 220, 110 S.Ct. 1028, 1035, 108 L.Ed.2d 178 (1990) (treatment of prisoner with antipsychotic drugs against his will implicates potential substantive due process violation); Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 672, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 1413, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977) (corporal punishment in public schools involves substantive due process issue); but see Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 392-94, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 1869-70, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989) (rejecting use of substantive due process analysis in 42 U.S.C. 1983 excessive force cases).

. In Marbury, Marshall declared an act of congress unconstitutional even though no one had challenged its constitutionality. Nor was such a declaration necessary to the decision. Marshall needed to say nothing more than, "We lack jurisdiction to issue the writ of mandamus because that authority is not within our original jurisdiction as specified in Article III; writ denied, case dismissed.” Yet he went out of his way to declare unconstitutional an act that no one had before presumed to be outside Congress’s authority. While Marbury v. Madison can be said to be an example of judicial activism, it does nevertheless form the cornerstone of the judicial branch’s obligation to ensure that legislative enactments pass constitutional muster.