Court Opinion

ID: 9574027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:01:37.303041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:57.610111
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the decision and generally in the basic logic developed for resolution. However, I write further to reject any supposition contained in the statements of the majority opinion that the legislature can, by limiting legislation, control rights of access for citizens to enforce guarantees of the Wyoming Constitution.1 Constitutional rights are not subject to validation at the whim of the state legislative authorization. Discussion to the contrary in the majority opinion is clearly unprepossessing dictum for the decision rendered here where the appeal is not constitutional in concept. Compare Cooney v. Park County, Wyoming, 792 P.2d 1287 (Wyo.1990), Urbigkit, J., dissenting, with White v. State, 784 P.2d 1313 (Wyo.1989), Urbigkit J., dissenting.
The modern persuasion of state jurists generally recognizes that the foundational support for maintenance of state constitutional guarantees has become their primary, and not a secondary, responsibility as now effectively recognized after prodding from the federal judiciary. As Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. stated in the foreword in J. Grodin, In Pursuit of Justice, xiv-xv (1989):
The very premise of the cases that foreclose federal remedies constitutes a clear call to state courts to step into the breach. With the federal locus of our double protection weakened, our liberties may suffer irretrievably if the state courts are not quick to take on the challenge the United States Supreme Court has laid down. * * *
Thus, the significance of the role of state courts in dispensing justice becomes greater each day. Without de*964tracting in the slightest from the work of the federal courts, it is fair to say that the decisions that affect people’s day-today lives most fundamentally are increasingly made by state courts.
It is for us to recognize that responsibility for the Wyoming Constitution is the absolute obligation of this state judiciary within the oath of office which each person honored by appointment provides to protect and defend. This subject is pervasively and appropriately addressed by the Michigan Supreme Court in Smith v. Department of Public Health, 428 Mich. 540, 410 N.W.2d 749 (1987), cert. granted sub nom. Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 485 U.S. 1005, 108 S.Ct. 1466, 99 L.Ed.2d 696 (1988), judgment aff'd sub nom. Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, — U.S. —, 109 S.Ct. 2304, 105 L.Ed.2d 45 (1989). See Widgeon v. Eastern Shore Hosp. Center, 300 Md. 520, 479 A.2d 921 (1984). See also Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U.S. 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803) and the foundational construction of the controlling philosophy developed by Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971).
Any suggestion that the legislature can legislatively amend the Wyoming Constitution by either negative enactment or denial of affirmative access legislation is not only unacceptable in concept, but contrary to the state jurist’s judicial responsibility. I am absolutely committed to a basic philosophy that constitutional wrongs are always subject to correction by the judiciary as the independent third branch of government in our democratic constitutional society. If not, we have no real present constitutional government or realistic promise of a continued democratic society.

. "[A]ny action against the State must be authorized by the legislature and that courts are without jurisdiction to proceed in any case that has not been so authorized."