Court Opinion

ID: 9578021
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:40:42.811253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:22:22.863079
License: Public Domain

OP ALA, J.,
concurring in result:
My views with respect to the legal conformity of the Initiative Petition No. 315— here under consideration — differ from those of the court on three distinct points. Because I advocate that we return to abandoned case law of yesteryear and overrule most recent precedent, I would give prospective effect to the course I wish to take. The change I propose would not apply to this proceeding but only to cases that will follow it. It is for this reason that I must dissent from the court’s pronouncement, although I do concur in its judgment only insofar as it holds that inasmuch as Petition No. 315 meets present-day legal requirements, it is not vulnerable to protestants’ procedural challenges.
I.
In our constitutional order courts will not pass upon the validity of legislation in advance of a complaint for its adversarial testing by one who is injured by its operation. The party who invokes the power to annul legislation for failure to comply with our fundamental law “must be able to show not only that the statute is invalid, but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its enforcement”.1 Mindful of this principle we declined — as early as 1910 — to entertain attacks launched on the constitutional validity of measures being proposed for adoption by means of an initiative peti*555tion. Threadgill v. Cross.2 We recognized that premature judicial testing of proposed measures would invade the legislative prerogative “to determine what laws shall be passed, leaving it to the other departments to question or determine the validity of such laws only when they come to be enforced against some one whose rights they affect.”3 The court’s deference to self-imposed abstention — a rule with deep historical roots derived from the tripartite character of our government — came to an end in 1975 when the opinion In re Supreme Court Adjudication, etc. freed us from the strictures.4 Because I so clearly perceive grave danger to our constitutional system from the risky enterprise of pronouncing abstract opinions upon hypothetical questions formulated in advance, of the law’s adoption by those with selfish interests in proposing or opposing measures,5 I would return the court to the teaching of Threadgill and its progeny.6 I must therefore abstain from ■ joining in the view that the proposed measure is impervious to attack on constitutional grounds. On this issue — which I believe to have been prematurely raised — I express no view.
II.
Art. 5 § 2, Okl.Const. provides that legislative or constitutional measures to be proposed by the initiative must be supported by a prescribed percentage of the “legal voters.” That percentage is to be “based upon the total number of votes cast at the last general election ”. [Emphasis added]. A like provision, which is contained in Art. 18 § 4(b), Okl.Const., governs municipal ini-; tiative and referendum petitions. At issue here is the meaning of the phrase “at the last general election”, as it is applied to an initiative whose pre-circulation filing was effected less than 90 days before the next general election and whose post-circulation submission came after such election. In a 1965 case, Shelton v. Lambert,7 we held that the quoted phrase means the general election which next precedes the pre-circu-lation filing of the petition. Two years later we rejected this view by pronouncing that the term “last general election”, as employed in Art. 5 § 2, Okl.Const., refers to the election that occurs before the post-circulation filing of the petition.8
I would return us to the 1965 pronouncement in Shelton. The post-Shelton change creates uncertainty and encourages specula*556tion and gamesmanship. What is worse, it virtually bars proponents unwilling to take a gamble on the number of signatures that will be needed from invoking the power of initiative within 90 days of every general election. In short, the people’s power to propose laws9 is severely restrained by a judicial pronouncement that requires proponents of a measure to wait 90 days — until after the next general election — to determine with certainty the number of signatures the constitution requires them to have for a valid exercise of power that is expressly reserved to the people by their fundamental law. The post -Shelton rule leaves the people’s precious right to guesswork and gamble, with those unwilling to take a chance being virtually barred from action and forced to await the results of the next election.
The constitutional power of the electorate to initiate law surely is watered down, if not impermissibly burdened, when circulation cannot be begun at any time with absolute certainty as to the number of signatures required to make the efforts legally efficacious. I would not leave in effect a rule of constitutional law which so severely burdens the people’s right to initiate measures at will.
III.
Before the 1965 amendment of 34 O.S. 1961 § 9, approval of a proposed ballot title to a proposed measure had to await its post-circulation filing and final approval for submission to a vote.10 The original legislative language which authorized the proponents to submit a proposed ballot title “pri- or to the circulation of the initiative petition” made no reference to the effect it would have on the 90-day circulation period prescribed by 34 O.S.1961 § 8. The current version of § 9, adopted in 1975,11 gives the proponents — in subdivision (D) — the very same option as that which was initially afforded them in 1965. Sections 8 and 9 must be construed together. They are in pari materia. Nowhere is there in either § 8 or § 9 any indication of legislative intent to suspend or arrest, during the time ballot title proceedings are in progress, the fixed 90-day period prescribed in § 812 for completion of circulation. Circulation clearly does begin with, is triggered by, and continues to run from, the date of the petition’s pre-circulation filing. When the post-1965 amendments are viewed in light of antecedent practice, it is at once apparent that the phrase in § 9D to the effect that “the ballot title shall be processed . . . prior to the circulation of the . . . petition” was intended merely to permit such process to take place before the completion of the petition’s circulation. There is no warrant either in § 8 or § 9 for postponing the commencement of the 90-day period beyond the outcome of ballot title proceedings. The clear legislative purpose is thus amply met by construing the crucial phrase in § 9D to mean that “the ballot title ... [may] be processed prior to the [completion] of the circulation ... ”13 Any other meaning of the quoted phrase places in the hands of the proponents a self-generated device for unilaterally extending the fixed statutory period between pre-circulation and post-circulation filings and gives them the advantage of a longer campaign and publicity for capturing public attention.
I would therefore overrule our prior decision 14 that allows the commencement of § 8 circulation period to be postponed beyond completion of ballot title proceedings under § 9D.
*557Because I cannot join the court in its commitment to precedent I deem so very harmful to the law’s symmetry and to its accord with time-honored principles of judicial restraint, I concur in the judgment only insofar as it holds that Petition No. 315 is not vulnerable to protestants’ procedural challenges.

. Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 488, 43 S.Ct. 597, 601, 67 L.Ed. 1078 [1923]; Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 505, 81 S.Ct. 1752, 1756, 6 L.Ed.2d 989 [1961]; Ash-wander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 341, 56 S.Ct. 466, 482, 80 L.Ed. 688 [1935] (Brandeis, J., concurring).

. 26 Okl. 403, 109 P. 558 [1910],

. Threadgill v. Cross, supra note 2, 109 P. at 563.

. In re Supreme Court Adjudication, etc., Okl., 534 P.2d 3, 8 [1975],

. The dangers from premature judicial testing of proposed measures were correctly assessed in' Threadgill v. Cross, supra note 2, 109 P. at 562, where this court stated: “We have not overlooked the argument that if the proposed amendment in the case at bar will be void because in conflict with any compact between the state and Congress, authorized by the federal Constitution, and if the Secretary of State may not refuse to file the petitions, a great expense will be incurred to the people of the state in holding a useless election. The same argument could be applied with equal, if not greater force, to sustain the right of the courts to enjoin the enactment of any void act of the Legislature, because it not infrequently happens that a Legislature consumes much time and incurs much expense to the state in passing laws which they think to be valid, but which the courts determine at the instance of some interested suitors whose rights have been encroached upon to be invalid. It may be that a government all of whose powers are administered by one department may be administered with less expense than a government of the kind existing in this state and in the other states of the Union, in which the powers are exercised by different departments; but, if so, it must be presumed that the people in adopting the present form of government did so with knowledge of that fact and notwithstanding preferred that the powers of their government be administered by these separate and independent departments...” [emphasis added].

. McAlister v. State, 96 Okl. 143, 221 P. 779 [1923]; McAlister v. State, 95 Okl. 200, 219 P. 134, 33 A.L.R. 1370 [1923]; In re Initiative Petitions, 153 Okl. 205, 6 P.2d 703 [1931]; In re Initiative Petition No. 259 etc., Okl., 316 P.2d 139, 146 [1957],

. Shelton v. Lambert, Okl., 399 P.2d 467, 470 [1965],

. In re Initiative Petition No. 281, State Question No. 441, Okl., 434 P.2d 941, 952 [1967],

. Art. 5 § 1, Okl.Const.

. Okla.Sess.L.1965, ch. 224, p. 388, 34 O.S. Supp.1965 § 9.

. 34 O.S.Supp. 1975 § 9.

. Now 34 O.S.Supp.1975 § 8.

. Whenever the intention of the legislature appears clear from a consideration of enactments in pari materia, language may be altered and new words supplied to give the statute that meaning which is necessary to effectuate legislative intent and harmony. WRG Const. Co. v. Hoebel, Okl., 600 P.2d 334, 337 [1979],

.In the Matter of the Proposed Ballot Title of State Question No. 541, Okl., 601 P.2d 103 [1979]; see also, Opinion 80-116 by the Attorney General, dated June 16, 1980.