Court Opinion

ID: 9790782
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:59:28.43892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:31.590387
License: Public Domain

RIGGS, P. J.,
concurring.
I agree with the lead opinion’s disposition as to both defendants, and with all of its reasoning regarding defendant Rudder. I also agree in the main with its reasoning concerning defendant Webb (defendant) and, in particular, I agree that section 2 of Senate Bill 66 violates Article III, section 1, the separation of powers provision of the Oregon Constitution.
Having decided the case on that basis, the lead opinion does not reach defendant’s arguments under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution or his arguments under the ex post facto provisions of both constitutions. The lead opinion explains its choice of the issue it treats as decisive by citing State v. Kennedy, 295 Or 260, 666 P2d 1316 (1983), where the Oregon Supreme Court articulated the general principle that the analysis of state constitutional issues should precede that of federal constitutional questions in the decision of cases.
Although I concur in the conclusion that the statute is contrary to the state separation of powers provision, I think that it is also clear — and possibly authoritatively clearer — that the statute violates federal due process requirements. See, e.g., Scott v. McNeal, 154 US 34, 46, 48, 14 S Ct 1108, 38 L Ed 896 (1894); Hughes v. Aetna Casualty Co., 234 Or 426, 448, 383 P2d 55 (1963).
Normally, I would not write separately to make the point that one of two independent and satisfactory bases for a decision is equal or preferable to the one that a majority of my participating colleagues has selected as the decisional rationale. I do so in this case, because I question whether Kennedy *53should be understood and applied as dictating the choice of rationales that the lead opinion makes here.
In my view, the policy choice the Supreme Court adopted in Kennedy and the resulting analysis assume, as necessary predicates, (1) that a party presents arguments that are based solely on parallel provisions of the two constitutions, e.g., the communicative protections in Article I, section 8, and in the First Amendment, and (2) that, as applied to the facts, the effect of the two provisions is equally unsettled or there is a meaningful possibility that the state provision may be more protective of the right that the party asserts. Beyond that point, a rigid application of the “state first” principle becomes jurisprudentially problematic. In this case, the lead opinion treats Kennedy as requiring that arguments based on any state constitutional ground take precedence over arguments based on any federal constitutional ground, even when the state and federal provisions in question are not analogs and have wholly different purposes. I do not suggest that a choice to decide this case on separation of powers rather than due process grounds is not jurisprudentially proper and defensible; I do suggest that Kennedy does not mandate that choice.
The courts have a fundamental obligation to articulate the law, as necessary to the decision of cases, in accordance with reasoned judicial principles. Among those principles is that the law should develop incrementally, and only as necessary to the decision of particular cases; indeed, that “minimalist” proposition is the principal underpinning of Kennedy itself. It seems to me to be intrinsic to the performance of that judicial responsibility that the courts not be required to respond to an argument concerning a previously undecided state constitutional issue, with possibly sweeping ramifications, if the party asserting it would otherwise prevail under a settled federal constitutional principle on which the party also relies.
There is little likelihood that the anomaly described in the preceding paragraph would be encountered in a situation where the arguments involve analogous provisions of the two constitutions. However, the problem could readily arise when wholly dissimilar or unrelated provisions are involved. *54To illustrate, if a party in a ‘ ‘speech case’ ’ urges an interpretation of Article I, section 8, and the same argument would prevail under United States Supreme Court interpretations of the First Amendment, the proferred interpretation of the Oregon provision would not be “sweeping” nor, under the Supremacy Clause, would it be meaningfully optional. A very different situation would be presented, however, if a defendant who would be entitled to prevail under existing federal due process authority urged in the alternative that the procedurally protected federal right should instead be recognized and protected in Oregon as a speech right under Article I, section 8.
Many labels, e.g., “judicial economy,” can be adduced in support of the underlying principle that this opinion espouses. At the heart of it, however, is that the courts should make law only to the extent necessary to decide cases. I understand Kennedy to be designed to promote that principle in a particular way, and not to establish a general mode of analysis that is inconsistent with it.