Court Opinion

ID: 9758701
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:40:49.177982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:54.104017
License: Public Domain

JOHNSTONE, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent. In my opinion, there is no doubt that the legislature’s attempt to criminalize the solicitation by lawyers of victims of accidents or disasters within thirty (30) days of the event violates long-standing principles of the separation of powers doctrine.
The framers of Kentucky’s constitution were careful to include express sections relating to the separation of powers. Specifically, they provide:
Section 27. Powers of government divided among legislative, executive, and judicial departments. The powers of the government of the Commonwealth of Kentucky shall be divided into three distinct departments, and each of them be confined to a separate body of magistracy, to wit: Those which are legislative, to one; those which are executive, to another; and those which are judicial, to another.
Section 28. One department not to exercise power belonging to another. No person or collection of persons, being of one of those departments, shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others, except in the instances hereinafter expressly directed or permitted.
As we stated in Legislative Research Commission v. Brown, Ky., 664 S.W.2d 907 (1984):
Our present constitution contains explicit provisions which, on' the one hand, mandate separation among the three branches of government, and on the other hand, specifically prohibit incursion of one branch of government into the powers and functions of the others. Thus, our constitution has a double-barreled, positive-negative approach.
Id. at 912 (emphasis in original).
Further, our 1891 constitution, as amended by the citizens of this Commonwealth in 1975, provides the following in Section 116:
The Supreme Court shall have the power to prescribe rules governing its appellate jurisdiction, rules for the appointment of commissioners and other court personnel, and rules of practice and procedure for the Court of Justice. The Supreme Court shall, by rule, govern admission to the bar and the discipline of members of the bar.
Emphasis added.
Thus, it is clear that the constitutional framework of Kentucky empowers the Supreme Court to govern all matters related to, inter alia, the discipline of members of the bar. Indeed, the majority sets out several cases in which we have held unconstitutional various attempts to legislate aspects of legal practice, procedure, admission, or discipline.
Perplexing, then, is the majority’s attempt to distinguish discipline imposed by this Court and that imposed by the legislature in the form of statutory criminal sanctions by referring to the General Assembly’s police power. No authority is cited that would allow one “department” of our government to exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others in the name of its police power. Nor is there solace to be found in KRS 524.130, which provides a penalty for the unauthorized practice of law. That statute expressly applies to persons practicing law “without a license issued by the Supreme Court,” not to members of our bar.
I greatly respect the General Assembly and its many valiant efforts to serve the *745citizens of Kentucky. We have long deferred to the policy making responsibility of our legislators. We frustrate legislative policy and intent only if laws enacted by the General Assembly violate the constitution. However, the judiciary likewise has the responsibility to respect and uphold the rules of law so admirably set out by the framers of our constitution. One of the most fundamental of those rules is the’ doctrine of the separation of powers among co-equal branches of our government. If we fail in that responsibility, we fail in our obligation to the judiciary and the citizens of this Commonwealth.
We may be rightly offended, as was the General Assembly, in the public’s outcry against the particular lawyer solicitation that the statute was drafted to preclude. However, the power to effect discipline to the members of the Kentucky bar lies solely within judicial boundaries. And, as eloquently stated by then Chief Justice John S. Palmore, in Ex Parte Auditor of Public Accounts, Ky., 609 S.W.2d 682, 687 (1980), “Experience teaches that a boundary not guarded will in time be lost.”
STUMBO, J., joins this dissenting opinion.