Court Opinion

ID: 9548500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:04:31.010124+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:03.416921
License: Public Domain

ALMA WILSON, Justice,
dissenting:
The constitutional amendment which forms the subject of the present controversy was passed by the people of the State of Oklahoma by Referendum Petition No. 156, adopted at election held May 24,1966. The 1966 amendment rewrote this section, which prior to such amendment thereto read:
“The members of the Legislature shall meet at the seat of government on the first Monday in January at twelve o’clock noon, in the year next succeeding their election, or upon such other day as may be provided by law.”
The above pre-1966 Section 26 of Article 5 of the Constitution of the State of Oklahoma left to the Oklahoma Legislature the power to determine for itself upon such days as it might remain in session. Most significantly, however, this unlimited legislative discretion was definitively circumscribed in 1966 by a vote of the people. Powers not expressly or by necessary implication granted to the Legislature inhere in the people. Simpson v. Hill, 128 Okl. 269, 263 P. 635 (1927). The Oklahoma Constitution, Article 5, Section 26 was amended in 1966 to provide explicitly as follows:
*794“The Legislature shall meet in regular session at the seat of government on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in January of each year, beginning at twelve o’clock noon, or upon such other day as may be provided by law. Each regular session of the Legislature shall be limited to ninety legislative days.” [Emphasis mine]
The law cited by the majority opinion can give no comfort of legal analysis since it is pre-1966 and therefore pre-amendment authority. Considering that the manifest purpose and intent of the constitutional provision, supra, is to set constitutional limits upon the time period in which our State Legislature is authorized to meet in regular session, I cannot condone a strained construction which purportedly authorizes a potentially limitless “regular” legislative session. Neither can I concede to a construction which suspends the edict of our State Constitution in the guise of “prospective application only” theory. See, Great Northern Railway Co. v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co., 287 U.S. 358, 53 S.Ct. 145, 77 L.Ed. 360 (1932). Such distortions in constitutional interpretation, I believe, fracture the document itself and defeat the very intent and purpose of the constitutional provision limiting the regular session to ninety legislative days.
A contextual analysis of the constitutional terms implemented in the mandate of § 26 establishes that the adjective term, “legislative”, modifies “days” and not visa-versa. The specification of “days” does not denote an infinite period, but rather has an identifiable beginning and end. Within the plain meaning of the Constitution, the interval or period called a “day” is not more than twenty-four hours and occurs within and upon a single calendar date. Moreover, “legislative”, within the context of § 26, modifies “days”, and pertains to the type of activities and by whom such acts are performed during each and every of the ninety days certain authorized by this section. Thus, a “legislative day” may constitutionally encompass from seconds, to minutes, to twenty-four hours, within a calendar date certain, to the extent that legislative actions transpire thereon.
According to the clear, unambiguous, and plain meaning of the document, it is my opinion that this Court is constrained to strictly construe and define the constitutional legislative day of § 26, thus: “That Period In Which Legislative Acts Transpire On A Specified Date.” The construction adopted by a majority of this Court today, I believe, distorts and defeats the plain meaning of the Constitution of this State.
I respectfully dissent.