Court Opinion

ID: 9672682
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:58:50.412504+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:17.783510
License: Public Domain

DONNELLY, Judge,
concurring in result.
Although we may be bound to follow the United States Supreme Court’s decisions concerning federal statutes as involving uniquely federal questions, see Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 174, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 1026, 93 L.Ed. 1282 (1949), in my view we are not so bound as to its pronouncements regarding the United States Constitution.
This is contrary to the views I expressed in 1972 and 1973. See Rodgers v. Danforth, 486 S.W.2d 258, 259 (Mo. banc 1972), and Kraus v. Board of Education of City of Jennings, 492 S.W.2d 783, 784 (Mo.1973). There I mistakenly accepted the assertion in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 3 L.Ed.2d 5 (1958), that the United States Supreme Court’s interpretations of the written Constitution constitute the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the Constitution and are of binding effect on the states. I have since concluded that the Cooper assertion is no more than a postulate. See A. Bickel, The Morality of Consent 101-102 (1975); L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 22 (1978); Caine, Judicial Review — Democracy Versus Constitutionality, 56 Temple L.Q. 297 (1983); Donnelly, The State of the Judiciary in Missouri-1982, 3 St. Louis U.Pub.L. Forum 101 (1983). Decisions by the United State Supreme Court in all cases arising under the Constitution should be “binding, in any case, [only] upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit * * A. Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861.
I concur only in the result.