Court Opinion

ID: 9845063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:14:50.839413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:51.232972
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. SDCL 25-7-7.3 is unconstitutional, as it represents legislative encroachment upon the constitutional power of the judiciary.
The doctrine of separation of powers is an integral part of our state constitution. Article II provides: “The powers of the government of the state are divided into three distinct departments, the legislative, executive, and judicial; and the powers and duties of each are prescribed by this Constitution.” The judicial power of the state is vested in a unified judicial system. S.D. Const., Art. V, § 1. Incidental to such a constitutional grant of judicial power is inherent power to do all things reasonably necessary to the administration of justice in the case before it. See, Smothers v. Lewis, 672 S.W.2d 62, 64 (Ky.1984). As SDCL 25-7-7.3 prevents retroactive modification of past due child support payments without regard to the equities of the particular factual situation presented in any individual case, I would hold that statute to be unconstitutional. Under this statute, a millionaire can claim past due child support from a financially hard-pressed parent, and the courts would be unable to weigh the equities and do justice. Circumstances change and a trial court must adjudicate on the realities of the domestic situation at hand. See, e.g., State ex rel. Larsgaard, 298 N.W.2d 381, 384 (S.D.1980). “Were this not so, grave injustices and inequities would arise.” Id. Here, obviously, equity has been forgotten.
If blindly followed, the effect of SDCL 25-7-7.3 is to partly overturn a century of equity jurisprudence in this Court under which child support arrearages were modifiable. In such cases, “[t]he trial court was sitting in equity and it acted in equity.” Larsgaard, at 384. Under SDCL 25-7-7.3, principles of equity yield to static procedural barriers. This cannot be for equity did evolve in response to the erection of such barriers.
Historically, equity is rooted in Aristotle’s principle of Epieikeia, and the Roman system of Aequitas. McClintock on Equity, 1-2 (2nd Ed.1948). The development of equity in Roman law was necessitated by judicial procedure so rigidly formalized and arbitrary that the slightest error was fatal. *4761 Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence § 3, p. 4 (5th Ed.1941). The fixed “formulas” which produced injustice were tempered by Roman magistrates’ application of natural law (lex naturae), or morality:
Whenever an adherence to the old jus civile would do a moral wrong, and produce a result inequitable (inaequum), the praetor, conforming his edict or his decision to the law of nature, provided a remedy by means of an appropriate action or defense. Gradually the cases, as well as the modes in which he would thus interfere, grew more and more common and certain, and thus a body of moral principles was introduced into the Roman law, which constituted equity (aequitas). (citations omitted). This resulting equity was not a separate department; it penetrated the entire jurisprudence, displacing what of the ancient system was arbitrary and unjust, and bringing the whole into an accordance with the prevailing notions of morality.
1 Pomeroy, § 8, p. 12-13. In England, growth of equity proceeded in a manner in many ways strikingly analogous to that in Roman law. 1 Pomeroy, § 9, p. 13. In particular, the Court of Chancery developed to grant special remedies which common-law courts could not give. 1 Pomer-oy, § 34, p. 39. Chancery acted upon equitable principles despite express rules of law and statutes to the contrary where such action was required by equity and good conscience. 1 Pomeroy, § 51, p. 66. The chancellor was encharged, as early as 1468 A.D., to determine all matters “according to equity and conscience.” J.H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 90 (2nd Ed.1979). The same “difficulty of rigidness, arbitrariness, and non-adaptation to the needs of society” gripped the English common law as had threatened to immobilize Roman law. Aequitas and equity developed in response. Here, with SDCL 25-7-7.3, the State Legislature has attempted to impose similar rigidity upon the judiciary.
I would continue to apply the hallowed principles of equity. As Justice Field wrote, in 1880:
[T]he doctrine now commonly maintained is that the general superintendence and protective jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery over the persons and property of infants is a delegation of the rights and duty of the crown; that it belonged to that court and was exercised by it from its first establishment; and that this general jurisdiction was not even suspended by the statute of Henry VIII., erecting the court of wards and liveries.
Insurance Co. v. Bangs, 103 U.S. (13 Otto) 435, 438, 26 L.Ed. 580, 581 (1880). Therefore, a nullification by the State Legislature of the Chancery/Equity powers of the courts of this state contravenes the historical development, significance and conscience of the equitable powers of those men or women entrusted with the application of just principles of law. Our State Legislature seeks to substitute a force of rigidity over the power of judicial reason.
The infringement inflicted upon judicial authority by SDCL 25-7-7.3 is similar, in spirit and effect, to those provisions of SDCL 25-7-7 which attempt to manacle the judiciary of this state with rigid child-support guidelines.* See, Feltman v. Feltman, 434 N.W.2d 590, 593-94 (S.D.1989) (Henderson, J., dissenting); Peterson v. Peterson, 434 N.W.2d 732, 739-41 (S.D.1989) (Henderson, J., concurring in part; concurring in result in part); and, Donohue v. Getman, 432 N.W.2d 281, 283-85 (S.D.1988) (Henderson, J., specially concurring). Also akin is the now-defunct “mini-judge” system of SDCL 25-7A-22, created by the Legislature in 1986 S.D.Sess.L., Ch. 218 (HB 1378), whereby the Department of Social Services was unconstitutionally authorized to exercise judicial power. See, Sharp v. Sharp, 422 N.W.2d 443, 448-49 (S.D.1988) (Henderson, J., dissenting); Bruning v. Jeffries, 422 N.W.2d 579, 582-84 (S.D.1988) (Henderson, J., concurring in *477result). This Court may address constitutional issues sua sponte, Bayer v. Johnson, 349 N.W.2d 447 (S.D.1984). I would do so here. The judicial branch of government is not a branch of the legislative tree. Larsgaard, 298 N.W.2d at 384.
“The equity jurisdiction thus vested in the circuit courts by the Constitution [of the State of South Dakota] cannot be abrogated, impaired, or circumscribed by subsequent legislative act.” Camp Crook Independent School District No. 1 v. Shevling, 65 S.D. 14, 24, 270 N.W. 518, 523 (1936). In State ex rel. Vig v. Lehman, 45 S.D. 394, 399, 187 N.W. 720, 721 (1922), this Court held: “[t]he remedy awarded in chancery courts was considered to be inseparable from equity jurisdiction itself, which jurisdiction cannot be taken away, or limited by legislative enactment.” Legislative encroachment upon the judiciary is universally condemned:
“The uniform view held in this country is that the legislature does not inherently possess any judicial power or any mixed jurisdiction which is partly legislative and partly judicial. Stated as a composite of the various expressions to be found in the reported cases, the rule is that the legislature may not invade, exercise, assume, usurp, or encroach upon the powers or province of the judiciary. The doctrine of separation of the powers of the government into three distinct departments is considered sufficient to prevent the legislature from exercising any judicial function whatsoever, except such as may in terms be allowed to it by the constitution itself, and any legislative act which clearly and manifestly exercises power properly belonging to the judicial department is unconstitutional.”
16 Am.Jur.2d Constitutional Law § 326, at 862-3 (1979).
The constitutional separation of powers doctrine cannot be done away with by legislative action. Application of Nelson, 83 S.D. 611, 617, 163 N.W.2d 533, 536 (1968). In Nelson, this Court held:
“[T]he absolute independence of the judiciary from executive or legislative control is of transcendent import. Our form of government cannot be maintained without an independent judiciary; and, if we as a people submit to a mingling of governmental power, we then accept in fact that which we most abhor — one-man autocratic control — and the constitutional safeguards of our Nation and State would then be abrogated.”
Nelson, 83 S.D., at 618, 163 N.W.2d, at 537 (quoting Local 170, Transport Workers Union of America v. Gadola, 322 Mich. 332, 34 N.W.2d 71 (1948)). An imposition of autocratic rule by the legislative arm is no less dangerous to constitutional government than one-man autocracy in the executive branch. See, also, James Madison’s expression, in Federalist No. 48, at 251 (J. Madison) (J. Cooke Ed. 1961), of the danger of legislative usurpations, “which by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpation.”

 The calcifying effect of SDCL 25-7-7 has, apparently, been ameliorated to some extent by 1989 S.D.Sess.L. Ch. 220, effective July 1, 1989 (H.B. 1081), whereby deviation from the guidelines may be justified by ”[a]ny financial condition of either parent which would make application of the schedule inequitable.”