Court Opinion

ID: 9539908
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:11:31.732675+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:27.266228
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
concurring.
Initially, the majority opinion indicates that Pennsylvania courts have consistently followed Baldwin v. City of Philadelphia, 99 Pa. 164 (1881). See Majority Opinion, at 537 n. 4, 985 A.2d at 730 n. 4. Later in the opinion, however, the majority discusses a series of Article III cases exhibiting strong tension *543with Baldwin’s core rationale. See id. at 539-42, 985 A.2d at 732-33.
As ably advanced by Appellee, there have always been strong historical and contextual arguments to be made that the term “law,” as used in Article III, refers only to enactments by the General Assembly.1 Thus, I find this to be a very difficult setting in which to apply the exception to stare decisis pertaining to manifestly erroneous decisions. Rather, I believe the Court is in a position of reconciling two inconsistent, but both reasoned, lines of decisions, and that the present outcome is most consistent with this Court’s modern Article III jurisprudence and the salutary policies underlying the constitutional prescriptions.

. Appellee validly notes that Baldwin mirrors the position taken by a number of other courts at or near the time of its issuance. See Brief for Appellee at 3-6 (citing State v. Lee, 29 Minn. 445, 13 N.W. 913, 914 (1882) ("The terms ‘by-law,’ 'ordinance,' and ‘municipal regulation' have substantially the same meaning, and are defined 'to be the laws of the corporate district, made by the authorized body, in distinction from the general law of the state.' ”); Town of Rutherford v. Swink, 96 Tenn. 564, 35 S.W. 554, 555 (1896) (same); United States v. Cella, 37 App.D.C. 433, 435 (D.C.Cir.1911) (“While municipal ordinances or police regulations are binding upon the community affected by them, they do not emanate from the supreme power of the state, which is the exclusive source of all general legislation.”); Meredith v. Whillock, 173 Mo.App. 542, 158 S.W. 1061, 1064 (1913) ("That a city ordinance is not law is obvious. An ordinance is defined to be 'a rule or regulation adopted by a municipal corporation.' " (emphasis removed and citation omitted)); Maner v. Dykes, 183 Ga. 118, 187 S.E. 699, 702 (1936) (determining that the word “law” used in a constitutional amendment referred to enactments by the General Assembly)). See also Fennell v. Common Council of Bay City, 36 Mich. 186, 190, 1877 WL 3736, *3 (1877) ("The term law, as defined by the elementary writers, emanates from the sovereignty and not from its creatures. The legislative power of the state is vested in the state legislature, and their enactments are the only instruments that can in any proper sense be called laws.” (emphasis removed)).