Court Opinion

ID: 9709292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:44:14.128397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:47.480336
License: Public Domain

STEELE, Chief Justice and JACOBS, Justice,
concurring.
We concur in the result reached here and in the rationale of the Court of Chancery, namely, that the General Assembly’s action mooted the administrative proceedings before DNREC and the Chancery litigation. We write separately to state more explicitly why the legislative action mooted those administrative ■ proceedings, and to address more specifically the appellant’s claim that the Chancellor’s denial of relief was constitutionally impermissible because it deprived the appellant of a vested right, protected by the Due Process Clause, to proceed with its administrative appeal.
First, the record before us shows that the General Assembly (1) was fully aware that the Environmental Appeals Board had remanded the case to the Secretary to perform a cost benefit analysis, and (2) announced in the bond bill that it had undertaken a cost benefit analysis. In such circumstances, this Court, out of deference to an independent, co-equal branch of State Government, should assume that the cost benefit analysis undertaken by the General Assembly was coextensive with, if not identical to, that called for by the Environmental Appeals Board in its remand to the Secretary. Therefore, no purpose would be served by a remand, for which reason the administrative proceedings, and the Court of Chancery action brought to enforce the continuation of those proceedings, were mooted.
Second, the appellant’s argument — that its right to continue prosecuting the administrative proceeding is constitutionally protected — is flawed. The only rights implicated here are rights belonging to the public, not rights accruing to any private citizen. No private- right has, or could have, vested, because the Sierra Club, in its capacity as plaintiff, does not seek to *549enforce a right specific to itself individually or to any individual citizen, but only rights belonging to the public generally. Because solely public rights are involved, the General Assembly is empowered to define (or, in this case, redefine) what the public right shall be.4 In discharging that responsibility, the General Assembly may supersede any appellate procedure or process established by its own earlier legislation. Because no private rights are involved, such overriding legislation will not be deemed to have abridged any vested private right that would be constitutionally protected from legislative infringement.5
For these reasons, we concur in the decision to affirm the judgment of the Court of Chancery.

. Hazzard v. Alexander, 173 A. 517, 519 (Del.Super.1934) (“The rule that a vested right of action is property just as tangible things are, and is protected from arbitrary legislation, applies to those rights of action which spring from contracts or the common law.... No one has a vested right in a public law, but the legislature may repeal or amend all legislative acts not in the nature of contracts or private grants,”).

. Id.; see, Biodiversity Associates v. Cables, 357 F.3d 1152, 1171 (10th Cir.2004) ("When Congress does not control the substance of a right, there are limits to its ability to influence the judiciary’s determination of that right, either by directing the judiciary to decide a particular way or by setting aside judicial determinations after the fact. But where rights are the creatures of Congress, ... Congress is free to modify them at will, even though its action may dictate results in pending cases and terminate prospective relief in concluded ones. Thus, [United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1871)'s] prohibition on prescribing rules of decision in pending cases has no application to public rights cases like this one.”).