Court Opinion

ID: 9794880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:13:26.63655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:21:56.407124
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
*71Our Constitution states in clear, unambiguous and unmistakably plain, simple English that no member of the legislature, during his term, may aspire to a public office, the emoluments of which are increased by a legislature in which he is a member.
If ever a case were arrived at by judicial and rhetorical prestidigitation, this is that case, which in substance and effect concludes that this Court may determine the eligibility of candidates for office; and that if the Constitution says otherwise, — junk the Constitution. It simply is a thesis to the effect that the judiciary may be quite oblivious to Constitutional sanction or interdiction. The portent of such a conclusion results in lacrimonious lament, in the light of our cherished concepts about separation of powers and reverence for Constitutional prerogatives or inhibitions. The disarming platitudes of the main opinion do not make our Constitution shine the more brightly, but without logic or satisfactory explanation, and by judicial fiat, dims it.
After this case, anyone should be eligible to run for anything if he violates the Constitution a little but not too much.
After this case, anyone who aspires to public office may be eligible to run if he simply throws his hat in the ring and spends some money which the main opinion seems to think he should not have to lose. This is not very comforting to the other fellow who really is eligible but may not have as much money to spend, but nonetheless loses whatever he spends.
After this case, a little increase in the emoluments of office will not affect one’s eligibility, but a big increase apparently would. The Constitution does not say this, but says just the opposite. Nowhere in that erstwhile divinely inspired document can one find any language that deifies a 5% increase but damns a 50% raise. To reason that just a little “across-the-board” raise is not actually a raise at all not only strains one’s credulity, but suggests that a little pregnancy conveniently but temporarily may be acceptable.
There is nothing in the Constitutional language that suggests any such arithmetic formula, and the court can produce no slide-rule, rubber or otherwise, that justifiably can say a 5% increase in salary is not an increase in emoluments of the office, but that a 50% increase would be. Such a conclusion makes one suspicion the gratuity of the main opinion that the judicial system “does not function by casting reason aside and clinging slavishly to a literal application of one single provision of law to the exclusion of all others.” If the Constitution says one cannot be a candidate if he is a member of the legislature that increases the emoluments of the office he later seeks, there is no judicial yardstick that can justify the position that a little increase in emolument is nice, but a bigger *72one, — how big? — is very naughty and should kill its beneficiary by virtue of arithmetic formulae.
The main opinion says the Constitutional provision is to protect against dishonest legislators. This is an inanity that is predicated on the assumption that a crooked legislator who seeks office hoping to enjoy a 5% increase in its emoluments, must not be condemned by this court, as a fact finder, but that the haloed one with character references addressed to this court, is immune from the Constitution and can aspire to any office he seeks. In my opinion, this is a non sequitur which this high court has neither the pleasure or luxury to indulge.
The Constitution does not exempt one where a 1% increase in emolument is involved, nor one with a 10% increase, nor a ¡100% increase, nor “an across-the-board” increase. It does not say it favors the “little” increase but not the “big” one. Yet this court says it does without resort to any lexicographal sense or meaning.
The main opinion’s unwarranted statement that “The fact that some members of the legislature aspired to the named offices is merely coincidental,” is so naive as to merit no analysis, discussion or attempt at answer. It is like saying that if one could have prevented the baby from drowning in the bathtub, its death would be “merely coincidental.” In one fell swoop, the amazing pronouncement of the majority says the Constitution means nothing'; that it is “merely coincidental,” and that the candidate is eligible if morally he is in good standing, — otherwise not.
I have read the main opinion over and over and inescapably can conclude nothing else except to learn that the court in this case loves everyone, except those it does not love, and that the clear expressions in the Constitution cannot interfere with such a noble, paternalistic philosophy.