Court Opinion

ID: 9759502
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:18:34.815601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:02.373651
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority's disposition of appellant’s first two points of error.
My problem in dissenting is that Tex. Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 6701d, § 107C (Vernon Supp.1987), the “seat-belt law,” is, in part, both salutary and not severely oppressive — indeed, the appellant complains that the only constitutional right infringed upon is his right to be free from bodily restraint. In other contexts, of course, this freedom is of tremendous value and may even be said to constitute an essential ingredient in one’s enjoyment of life. But I do question whether this specific regulation is “reasonable” in relation to its subject, or that, upon analysis, it is adopted in the interest of the community. This penal regulation is focused primarily on the enforced protection by the individual of his own person, and this is where it is oppressive. Only incidentally or collaterally is its beneficial effect intended to be imposed on the travel-ling public.
Here, there was no accident, no collision, no property damage, no injuries — merely the refusal by a driver to fasten his own seat belt. It is equally as offensive to me to criminalize smoking tobacco, or watching too much television, or the failure to brush one’s teeth daily, or the consumption of alcohol in the privacy of one’s home. In each case, the potential transgression, though its prohibition is aimed clearly at safeguarding the health or safety of the individual, has collateral consequences for the public, of varying degree.
Logically, the “rational basis” test, invoked by the majority, is applicable only where the anti-social conduct of the individual impinges upon the rights of another. Only thus could the test be compatible with the primary meaning of “liberty” in a democratic society: the opportunity to *751swing one’s arms as freely as one wishes— without hitting anyone else’s nose. “Liberty” also necessarily implies one’s acceptance of the risks involved in being free to make mistakes, to be foolish, to err, to blunder, without being punished by the social organization unless harm is thereby inflicted on others. Clearly, the State has an obligation to teach the better and more civilized path, but democracy requires, where possible, the substitution of self-restraint for external restraint. I am reminded of what Mr. Justice Brandéis wrote:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficient
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Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 479, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928).
In adhering to the principle that government can legitimately punish behavior only when it inflicts harm on another, but not when it is self-harmful or merely unwise, I echo the view expressed by both Louis D. Brandéis and John Stuart Mill. Brandéis evaluated “the right to be let alone” as “the right most valued by civilized men” in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. at 478, 48 S.Ct. at 572. This statement is, perhaps, but a compendious version of John Stuart Mill’s political discourse “On Liberty,” in which he wrote, in 1859,
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.... The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.... The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
Because I am afraid that if we uphold the authority of the State to punish one’s failure to use a seat-belt, we are one more step on our way to an Orwellian society in which the State can punish merely for smoking cigarettes, for not brushing one’s teeth, or for being foolish, I must dissent.