Court Opinion

ID: 9429596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:27:17.964963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:20.316817
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring in the judgment.
In my opinion the judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts reflects an error of a more fundamental character than the one this Court corrects today. It rested its decision on the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution without telling us whether the warrant was valid as a matter of Massachusetts law.1 It has thereby increased its own burdens as well as ours. For when the case returns to that court, it must then review the probable-cause issue once again and decide whether or not a violation of the state constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures has occurred. If such a violation did take place, much of that court’s first opinion and all of this Court’s opinion are for naught.2 If no such violation occurred, the sec*736ond proceeding in that court could have been avoided by a ruling to that effect when the case was there a year ago.
If the Magistrate had violated a state statute when he issued the warrant, surely the State Supreme Judicial Court would have so held and thereby avoided the necessity of deciding a federal constitutional question. I see no reason why it should not have followed the same sequence of analysis when an arguable violation of the State Constitution is disclosed by the record. As the Oregon Supreme Court has stated:
“The proper sequence is to analyze the state’s law, including its constitutional law, before reaching a federal constitutional claim. This is required, not for the sake either of parochialism or of style, but because the state does not deny any right claimed under the federal Constitution when the claim before the court in fact is fully met by state law.” Sterling v. Cupp, 290 Ore. 611, 614, 625 P. 2d 123, 126 (1981).3
The maintenance of the proper balance between the respective jurisdictions of state and federal courts is always a difficult task. In recent years I have been concerned by what I have regarded as an encroachment by this Court into territory that should be reserved for state judges. See, e. g., Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1065 (1983) (Stevens, J., dissenting); South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U. S. 553, 566 (1983) (Stevens, J., dissenting); Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U. S. 456, 477-489 (1981) (STEVENS, J., dissenting); Idaho Department of Employment v. Smith, 434 U. S. 100, 103-105 (1977) (Stevens, J., dissenting in part). The maintenance of this balance is, however, a two-way *737street. It is also important that state judges do not unnecessarily invite this Court to undertake review of state-court judgments. I believe the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts unwisely and unnecessarily invited just such review in this case. Its judgment in this regard reflects a misconception of our constitutional heritage and the respective jurisdictions of state and federal courts.
The absence of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution proposed by the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a major objection to the Convention’s proposal. See, e. g., 12 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 438 (Boyd ed. 1955). In defense of the Convention’s plan Alexander Hamilton argued that the enumeration of certain rights was not only unnecessary, given that such rights had not been surrendered by the people in their grant of limited powers to the Federal Government, but “would even be dangerous” on the ground that enumerating certain rights could provide a “plausible pretense” for the Government to claim powers not granted in derogation of the people’s rights. The Federalist No. 84, pp. 573, 574 (Ford ed. 1898) (A. Hamilton). The latter argument troubled the First Congress during deliberations on the Bill of Rights, and its solution became the Ninth Amendment. See 1 Annals of Congress 439 (1789) (remarks of Rep. Madison).
The Ninth Amendment provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” To the extent that the Bill of Rights is applicable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment, the principle embodied in the Ninth Amendment is applicable as well. The Ninth Amendment, it has been said, states but a truism. But that truism goes to the very core of the constitutional relationship between the individual and governmental authority, and, indeed, between sovereigns exercising authority over the individual.
In my view, the court below lost sight of this truism, and permitted the enumeration of certain rights in the Fourth Amendment to disparage the rights retained by the people of *738Massachusetts under Art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. It is of course not my role to state what rights Art. 14 confers upon the people of Massachusetts; under our system of federalism, only Massachusetts can do that. The state court refused to perform that function, however, and instead strained to rest its judgment on federal constitutional grounds.
Whatever protections Art. 14 does confer are surely disparaged when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts refuses to adjudicate their very existence because of the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution of the United States. The rights conferred by Art. 14 may not only exceed the rights conferred by the Fourth Amendment as construed by this Court in Gates, but indeed may exceed the rights conferred by the Fourth Amendment as construed by the state court. The dissent followed the approach of the majority to its logical conclusion, stating that there “appears to be no logical basis, and no support in the case law, for interpreting the term ‘cause’ in art. 14 differently from the ‘probable cause’ requirement of the Fourth Amendment.” 390 Mass. 562, 580, 458 N. E. 2d 717, 727 (1983). “The right question,” however, “is not whether a state’s guarantee is the same as or broader than its federal counterpart as interpreted by the Supreme Court. The right question is what the state’s guarantee means and how it applies to the case at hand. The answer may turn out the same as it would under federal law. The state’s law may prove to be more protective than federal law. The state law also may be less protective. In that case the court must go on to decide the claim under federal law, assuming it has been raised.” Linde, E Pluribus— Constitutional Theory and State Courts, 18 Ga. L. Rev. 165, 179 (1984).
It must be remembered that for the first century of this Nation’s history, the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States was solely a protection for the individual in relation to federal authorities. State Constitutions protected *739the liberties of the people of the several States from abuse by-state authorities. The Bill of Rights is now largely applicable to state authorities and is the ultimate guardian of individual rights. The States in our federal system, however, remain the primary guardian of the liberty of the people. The Massachusetts court, I believe, ignored this fundamental premise of our constitutional system of government. In doing so, it made an ill-advised entry into the federal domain.
Accordingly, I concur in the Court’s judgment.

 Indeed, that court rather pointedly refused to consider whether the search violated the provisions of Art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. It stated, in part:
“If we have correctly construed the significance of Illinois v. Gates, the Fourth Amendment standards for determining probable cause to issue a search warrant have not been made so much less clear and so relaxed as to compel us to try our hand at a definition of standards under art. 14. If we have misassessed the consequences of the Gates opinion and in fact the Gates standard proves to be unacceptably shapeless and permissive, this court may have to define the protections guaranteed to the people against unreasonable searches and seizures by art. 14, and the consequences of the violation of those protections.” 390 Mass. 562, 573-574, 458 N. E. 2d 717, 724 (1983).

 Cf. South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364 (1976) (rev’g 89 S. D. 25, 228 N. W. 2d 152), on remand, 247 N. W. 2d 673 (1976) (judgment *736reinstated on state grounds); South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U. S. 553 (1983) (rev’g 312 N. W. 2d 723 (1981)), on remand, 346 N. W. 2d 425 (1984) (judgment reinstated in part on state grounds).

 See also State v. Kennedy, 295 Ore. 260, 666 P. 2d 1316 (1983), and cases cited therein, id., at 262, 666 P. 2d, at 1318; Hewitt v. State Accident Ins. Fund Corp., 294 Ore. 33, 41-42, 653 P. 2d 970, 975 (1982).