Court Opinion

ID: 9661694
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:46:48.071173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:32.696369
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, Justice, concurring. I join in Justice Hickman’s opinion, but I wish to add the dissenting opinions of the Chief Justice and of Justice Stroud are fundamentally in error in assuming that the court is passing upon the validity of an exercise of legislative power. That power is almost invariably defined as the authority to make, alter and repeal laws. See Gregory v. Cockrell, 179 Ark. 719, 18 S.W. 2d 362 (1929). Our Constitution has a great deal to say about the enactment of laws, which is the exercise of legislative power. No láw shall be passed except by bill. No bill shall become a law unless it has an enacting clause and is passed in a certain way. All bills are subject to the governor’s veto and to possible approval or disapproval by popular referendum. The General Assembly’s power to make, alter, and repeal laws is not even involved in this case; so the presumption of legislative authority has nothing to do with the question. We are simply interpreting part of that language in the Constitution which creates the framework of state government — here the legislative branch. The authors of the Constitution declared in the clearest imaginable language that the General Assembly shall meet every two years. in a 60-day regular session, that the General Assembly may extend the regular session by a two-thirds vote, and that between regular sessions the governor may call the legislators into special session. The language of the Constitution is so plain that it really needs no interpretation. But if, as the dissenting opinions argue, the decision of the General Assembly to recess indefinitely is an exercise of legislative power, then the General Assembly has become the final interpreter of the Constitution.