Court Opinion

ID: 9737760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:34:00.879396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:01.142576
License: Public Domain

Brickley, J.
(concurring).
i. introduction
Troubled though I am by the 1987 amendments at issue here, reaching back as they do to rewrite the past by altering the past consequences of past transactions, the lamentable failure of the United States Supreme Court to articulate any discernible limits on the constitutionality of retroactive civil, economic legislation forecloses the conclusion that the 1987 amendments violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. For this reason, I reluctantly concur with the majority.
The threat that retroactive legislation poses to our system of republican government should, in my judgment, be taken very seriously. The alarm has been sounded by Professor Julian N. Eule, in his recent article Temporal limits on the legislative mandate: Entrenchment and retroactivity, 1987 Am B Found Res J 379. I write separately primarily to amplify Professor Eule’s message.
*541II. THE ABSENCE OF MEANINGFUL CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS ON RETROACTIVE CIVIL LEGISLATION
A
Regarding the current state of the law, Professor Eule neatly sums up the sad state of affairs as follows:
Efforts to locate limits on retroactivity in the due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments, although once viewed as promising, seem to have fallen on hard times. The resurrection of the contract clause has not been paralleled under the due process provisions. The occasional noises emanating from the Court, designed to remind us that the route is not foreclosed, have a hollow ring to them. In Usery v Turner Elkhorn Mining Co [428 US 1; 96 S Ct 2882; 49 L Ed 2d 752 (1976)], for example, Justice Marshall, writing for the Court, concluded his recitation of the minimal scrutiny appropriate in reviewing economic legislation under the due process clause with the statement: "It does not follow, however, that what Congress can legislate prospectively it can legislate retrospectively.” In the context of the entire opinion, which nevertheless upheld the retrospective application of federal mine health legislation, this language cannot be fairly read as proposing or applying a more stringent level of scrutiny for retroactive legislation. Minimal scrutiny is still very much the order of the day. Only the focus is adjusted slightly. Hence it is not the legislative selection of the means but its decision to apply the means retrospectively that must bear a "rational relationship” to whatever legitimate ends the Court conjures up. The slim possibility that a successful attack could ever be launched, given the size of this judicially constructed target, is rendered implausible by the strong presumption of constitutionality that economic and remedial social enactments are afforded, even when retroactive. In the determination of whether retrospective *542economic legislation violates due process, the burden of proving irrationality thus rests squarely on the party asserting the violation. There’s not much for a legislator to worry about here. [Id., p 429. Citations omitted.]
B
In my opinion, Turner Elkhorn and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp v R A Gray & Co, 467 US 717; 104 S Ct 2709; 81 L Ed 2d 601 (1984), make clear that the legislation here under attack need only survive minimal, rational-basis scrutiny.1 In addition, there are numerous cases from the federal courts of appeals supporting the majority’s result. See, e.g., Wiggins v Comm’r of Internal Revenue, 904 F2d 311 (CA 5, 1990) (upholding the retroactive application to tax year 1983 of 1984 federal tax legislation, despite the appellant’s reliance on the prior law); Canisius College v United States, 799 F2d 18 (CA 2, 1986), cert den 481 US 1014 (1987), Temple Univ v United States, 769 F2d 126 (CA 3, 1985), cert den 476 US 1182 (1986), and New England Baptist Hosp v United States, 807 F2d 280 (CA 1, 1986) (upholding, against a due process challenge, a retroactivity period of approximately four years); Long Island Oil Products Co, Inc v Local 553 Pension Fund, 775 F2d 24 (CA 2, 1985) (upholding a statute which reached back five years to undo a previously authorized six-month period of retroactivity); United States v Northeastern Pharmaceutical & Chemical Co, Inc, 810 F2d 726 (CA 8, 1986), cert den 484 US 848 (1987), United States v Monsanto Co, 858 F2d 160 (CA 4, 1988), cert den 490 US 1106 (1989), and O’Neil v *543Picillo, 883 F2d 176 (CA 1, 1989), cert den 493 US — (1990) (upholding retroactive application of a federal environmental statute creating liability for past, improper disposal of hazardous waste); Counsel v Dow, 849 F2d 731 (CA 2, 1988), cert den 488 US 955 (1988) (upholding legislation retroactively authorizing attorney fees); and cases upholding the constitutionality of the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, 29 USC 251 et seq., including Battaglia v General Motors Corp, 169 F2d 254 (CA 2, 1948), cert den 335 US 887 (1948), and Seese v Bethlehem Steel Co, 168 F2d 58 (CA 4, 1948) (upholding extensive retroactive nullification of a Supreme Court decision interpreting the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 USC 201 et seq.).
III. TEMPORAL LIMITS ON THE LEGISLATIVE MANDATE
While Professor Eule’s insights cannot be faithfully reproduced in a short space, the following excerpts may suffice to convey the gist of his thesis.
The Framers were not blind to the citizenry’s need for some security from the "fluctuating policy” of successive legislatures. It was to fulfill this need, said Madison, that the contract and ex post facto clauses were written into the Constitution. Conflicting lessons can be drawn from the inclusion of these restraints. They may alternatively be viewed as limited sanctuaries from the otherwise unfettered authority of legislatures to undo the policy judgments of their predecessors or as compelling evidence of the disfavored status of retrospective lawmaking. It is the choice between these competing visions—rather than the debate over natural law—that ultimately divided Justices Ire-dell and Chase in Calder v Bull [3 US (3 Dall) 386; 1 L Ed 648 (1798)]. Both agreed that the ex post facto clause could not, consistent with the histori*544cal meaning of that phrase, be applied to the civil legislation before the Court. For Justice Iredell this ended the constitutional inquiry since he believed that the legislature’s power necessarily included all that was not expressly denied to it. Furthermore, in Iredell’s eyes, the power to alter preexisting legal understandings was essential, not merely tolerable. He argued that if legislators were denied the ability to subordinate private rights to public exigencies, "the operations of Government would often be obstructed, and society itself would be endangered.” Iredell was not blind to the possibilities for abuse, but he contended that such risks had been undertaken willingly by the people when they delegated authority to their agents.
Justice Chase viewed the people’s grant as more restrained. Rejecting Iredell’s assumption that power not denied was conferred, Chase maintained instead that power not conferred was denied. A determination of what authority the people had entrusted to their agents (through the federal or state constitution) could not be made without an understanding of the principles of a republican form of government. Legislation inconsistent with those principles should be viewed as beyond the scope of the grant. The inapplicability of the ex post facto clause did not foreclose the possibility that the power exercised by the Connecticut legislature was one that the people of Connecticut had not conferred. It is common for scholars to characterize Justice Chase’s vision as limiting legislative power by reliance on immutable natural rights. This misses the point. Chase’s thesis was not that government could not be given the authority to act retrospectively, but that the conferral of power to act at odds with republican principles should not be "presumed.” For both Justices, therefore, the issue was one of agency: Does the scope of authority delegated by the people to their representatives comprehend the power to legislate retroactively where the exercise of such power is not expressly forbidden?
*545* * *
The voters do not delegate authority to rewrite history. Their earlier agents exercised legitimate authority when they enacted legislation. While such efforts may be repealed, this is not the same as retrospective eradication. A decision that bills defeated by prior legislatures can now be enacted and treated as if they had been enacted earlier arguably runs afoul of this same principle. The then-authorized representatives made a choice, and this decision demands recognition as the choice of the polity for that point in time. Each set of elected officials ought to be viewed as endowed by their sovereign with the mandate to make policy choices only within a bracketed temporal zone. Just as the delegation of authority does not encompass incursions into the domain of legislatures yet to come, it does not contemplate contravening the sanctity of time past.
While I contend that the prohibition against entrenchment and retroactivity are both products of the temporal boundaries the electorate affixes to its mandate, I do not pretend that these two borders are drawn to serve identical ends. I do believe they manifest a common interest in affording each generation of voters the opportunity to determine for itself, through its representatives, the rules that will govern its daily life. The two constraints, however, satisfy different—and at times conflicting—human needs. The postmandate restriction protects flexibility. It preserves the polity’s right to change its mind. The premandate limitation, on the other hand, offers stability. It enables the polity to alter its direction, without unduly undermining the security we all find so necessary. This means that the choices of our representatives can be relied on for the temporal realm in which these agents legitimately exercised authority. No more is guaranteed, but no less is tolerable. [Eule, supra, pp 441-446. Emphasis in original.]
The Legislature in this case did not merely *546change the future consequences of past acts, i.e., by changing the future benefit levels for persons injured prior to 1982—a practice which the appellants concede would be a constitutional way to amend our workers’ compensation scheme; rather, the Legislature turns back the clock to redefine rights and liabilities enjoyed and owing in the past, notwithstanding the fact that those rights and liabilities had already been determined by an earlier and different body of agents of an earlier majority, determinations which the Legislature in 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986 declined to change. The legislation in this case violates the temporal limits of the 1987 Legislature. Because the United States Supreme Court has given no indication that it approves of Professor Eule’s approach, however, I must decline to dissent on these grounds from the majority’s finding that the 1987 amendments are constitutional.2
IV. ANALYSIS OF THE MAJORITY OPINION
For the most part, I concur with the analysis adopted in the majority opinion. I, too, am troubled by the Legislature’s apparent attempt to interpret a prior statute adopted by a prior Legislature. This is doubly distressing in light of our intervening decision in Franks v White Pine Copper, 422 Mich 636; 375 NW2d 715 (1985). Because the Legislature may not interpret its own statute, let alone that of a prior Legislature, I agree with the majority that the 1987 legislation must be viewed as a retroactive amendment rather than as a "legislative interpretation” of an earlier statute. This is the effect of the 1987 legislation, and *547courts, which must presume statutes to be constitutional, are required to look beyond form to the substance of the challenged legislation.3 As stated earlier, I find no principled basis for concluding that the 1987 amendments fail the rational basis tests articulated by the United States Supreme Court; since appellants have not offered a persuasive reason for giving a broader interpretation to the Due Process Clause of the state constitution, I agree that appellants’ due process claims fail.4
I also agree with the majority that the appellants cannot show any sort of reliance on the prior state of the law. I would not, however, go so far as to hold the possibility of reasonable reliance foreclosed by the mere fact that the Legislature debated changing the law before doing so.
I do not agree with the majority’s cursory discussion and conclusion, ante, pp 531-532, that the amendments in this case are "remedial.” That term, in my view, should be used with caution, lest every amendment be deemed remedial. The majority has not persuaded me that the amendments at issue in this case should be so categorized.
Finally, I would not analyze appellants’ Contract Clause argument as if that clause applied in this case. I therefore concur in the analysis and holding of § n(A), but not in those of § n(B).
In all other respects, I concur in the result and analysis of the majority opinion.

 The Contract Clause, as the majority observes, does not help the appellants, and potentially promising arguments based on the Taking Clause of the federal constitution and Const 1963, art 4, § 27 are not before us.

 While the appellants refer to Professor Eule’s article, they do not mount a "temporal mandate” attack on the 1987 amendments rooted in the state constitution or in the Guaranty Clause of the federal constitution.

 Thus, if the provision declaring our decision in Franks erroneous is struck from the 1987 amendments, we must nevertheless determine whether the remainder may stand on its own terms. Since the remaining provisions clearly operate retroactively, the relevant inquiry is whether they offend due process.

 In addition, no reasons are offered why the traditional rational basis inquiry should not apply to the due process claim.