Court Opinion

ID: 9583576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:40:01.264145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:44.373146
License: Public Domain

Weltner, Justice,
concurring specially.
The sound development of the law, in any field, requires that “case by case” rules and “balancing” tests be limited to those recurring problems to which no plain and simple standard might be applied. Otherwise, we lift aloft a measurement no more precise than the fabled chancellor’s foot.
In my opinion, to follow Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778 (93 SC 1756, 36 LE2d 656) (1973), is to fall into the same habit which has attracted to the United States Supreme Court so much criticism — that is, a perceived inability on occasion to tell us what the law is, and what it is not.
This case provides an opportunity to interpret our own Constitution in reference to the liberty of free men: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, except by due process of law.” Constitution of Georgia of 1976, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. I (Code Ann. § 2-101).
To the man before the bar, it can make little difference whether his liberty is lost by conviction or by revocation. Conceptual distinctions between “right” and “privilege” notwithstanding, he is locked up either way!
I therefore suggest that our own constitutional protections should be extended to any criminal proceeding wherein liberty shall be at stake. This is not contrary to now Chief Justice Hill’s special concurrence in Foskey v. Sapp, 237 Ga. 788, 792 (229 SE2d 635) (1976), for to cast a man in prison without benefit of counsel, by whatever means, is itself “fundamentally unfair.”