Court Opinion

ID: 9661516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:40:49.155701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:29.354551
License: Public Domain

*880ANDERSON, PAUL H., Justice
(dissenting).
I join in the dissent of Justice Page, but I write separately because I see the point of disagreement between the majority and the dissent in a slightly different way. At its core, the disagreement between the majority and the dissent is over what it means to announce a new rule or principle of law. The majority takes the position that when the United States Supreme Court interprets the United States Constitution to grant broader protections than we have granted, the Supreme Court’s interpretation represents a new principle of law. I disagree. I would characterize our interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in State v. Langley, 354 N.W.2d 389 (Minn.1984), as having been a misinterpretation, and characterize the Supreme Court’s interpretation in Giles v. California, — U.S.-, 128 S.Ct. 2678, 171 L.Ed.2d 488 (2008), as a correction of that misinterpretation, not as the announcement of a new principle of law. The Supreme Court is, after all, the final interpreter of the U.S. Constitution. That said, I would not go as far as Justice Page to call the majority’s characterization absurd, nor would I characterize our misinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution in Langley as a perversion.