Court Opinion

ID: 9655217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:02:44.938045+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:16.676336
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
I agree in principle with the majority’s opinion that the General Assembly has failed thus far to, “by appropriate legislation, provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the State.” 1 Ky. Const., § 183. Nevertheless, this case should be reversed and dismissed because it does not present an “actual” or “justicia-ble” controversy. See KRS 418.040; Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed. 1979, p. 777.
An “actual controversy” for purposes of adjudication requires three things: (1) a justiciable issue (2) involving the legal rights (3) of adverse parties. Revis v. Daugherty, 215 Ky. 823, 287 S.W. 28 (1926); Veith v. City of Louisville, Ky., 355 S.W.2d 295 (1962).
An actual controversy is one admitting of specific relief through a decree conclusive in character. A judicial pronouncement in the present case where there are public questions of the utmost importance but no such justiciable controversy will cause more problems than it will solve. Worse yet, it opens the doors of the courthouse to a host of new lawsuits by litigants seeking a forum to argue questions of public policy which are incapable of specific judicial resolution. In line with the legal truism that “bad cases make bad law,” we can expect this case to be cited as precedent in a new wave of litigation involving issues that should be debated in the forum of public opinion, and then legislated rather than litigated.
To qualify as a judicial controversy the issues must touch legal relationships of parties having adverse legal interests, clearly definable, concrete, and admitting of specific resolution. The Declaratory Judgment Act, KRS 418.040, was never intended for advisory opinions. As the late great wordsmith, Judge Gus Thomas, so aptly said:
“[Cjontroverted questions are justiciable ones, and ... do □ not include abstract legal questions designed merely to furnish information to the inquirer and which, if jurisdiction was taken, would convert courts into a sort of law school for the instruction of the inquisitive mind.” Oldham County v. Arvin, 244 Ky. 551, 51 S.W.2d 657, 658-59 (1932).
I. THE PROBLEMS RELATED TO THE ISSUES
Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962), provides a framework for considering the problems related to the issues. First, as to justiciability:
*224“[T]he Court’s inquiry necessarily proceeds to the point of deciding whether the duty asserted can be judicially identified and its breach judicially determined, and whether protection for the right asserted can be judicially molded.” 369 U.S. at 198, 82 S.Ct. at 700.
Then, as to nonjusticiability:
“The nonjusticiability of a political question is primarily a function of the separation of powers. 869 U.S. at 210 [82 S.Ct. at 706].
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Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion.” 369 U.S. at 217 [82 S.Ct. at 710].
Viewed objectively, the issues in this case fail to qualify under the standards for justiciability in Baker v. Carr, falling instead squarely within its description of a nonjusticiable case: there is (1) in our Kentucky Constitution a “textually demonstrable ... commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department,” viz., the General Assembly; (2) “a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards”; and (3) “the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion.” Id.
The case as presented to us neither asks for nor is amenable to specific relief through a decree conclusive in character. The appellees have made it painfully clear throughout that they do not want our Court to declare any particular statute or group of statutes unconstitutional, including the system of local school districts, local financing and local administration now in place. Yet, the Majority Opinion decides otherwise:
“Lest there by any doubt, the result of our decision is that Kentucky’s entire system of common schools is unconstitutional ... — all its parts and parcels. This decision applies to the statutes creating, implementing and financing the system and to all regulations, etc., pertaining thereto. [Emphasis original].
If this verbiage is taken literally, local school districts who are the members of the Council for Better Education, the moving force behind this lawsuit may be eaten up by the monster they created when they invited the courts into the dialogue about how to improve the public school system. The statutes that create them have now been declared unconstitutional. Unable to rationalize an opinion that declares nothing unconstitutional, we seem to have declared everything unconstitutional.
Elsewhere, the Opinion states that “individual statutes are not herein addressed specifically or considered and declared to be facially unconstitutional.” But our “school system” is nothing more and nothing less than the statutes, individually and collectively, structuring its existence and providing for its financing. The system does not exist apart from the statutes, and cannot be declared unconstitutional without specifying which of its components, in whole or in part, make it so.
At oral argument appellees’ counsel conceded that, in asking that we declare the system unconstitutional but not the statutes, they were presenting us with a “Gordian” knot. But ask they did, thus presenting us with an' insolvable, nonjusticiable dilemma. And, we have responded with what could be expected when you open Pandora’s box, an Opinion which at the same time declares everything unconstitutional and nothing unconstitutional. This is more than just a vain act or a bad precedent. This result may well create havoc in the educational process. It adds to the General Assembly’s burden in seeking to improve our educational system rather than lightening the load.
The lawsuit filed in Franklin Circuit Court, carefully analyzed, does no more than ask the courts to demand that the Governor and the General Assembly proceed to improve the public school system, specifically by telling the executive and legislative branch to propose and enact new *225taxes. While for the most part the trial court’s response, like ours, was limited to advice and comments rather than judicial decision-making, its decision went further by granting specific relief in two areas: (1) a mandate to the General Assembly to impose additional new taxes and (2) an order to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to return to Franklin Circuit Court to report on the General Assembly’s progress. Both of these, the only concrete or specific “relief” granted, are invalidated by our decision, and rightly so, recognizing they are orders that exceed the power of the judiciary.
As to funding, we state only that “[t]he General Assembly must provide adequate funding for the system. How they do this is their decision.”
As to Judge Corns’ Order to the leadership of the General Assembly to report to him on its progress, we declare this “a clear incursion, by the judiciary, of the functions of the legislature.”
On the other hand, in our Opinion we ordered nothing specific, only that the General Assembly comply with the Constitution, which, of course, it is already duty bound to do.
I say this with one major reservation, because there is one portion of our Opinion that seems to do more than simply encourage the General Assembly to enact legislation to improve the school system. It states:
“[Bjecause of the great disparity of local tax efforts in the present system of common schools, the General Assembly must establish a uniform tax rate for such property.” [Emphasis original.]
If this sentence means what it says, we have done what we were not asked to do, declare unconstitutional the statutes permitting local school districts to set local tax rates within certain guidelines. Destroying the power presently assigned by statute to local school districts to set local school tax rates may or may not work an improvement. Either way, certainly, it is beyond the scope of the relief sought by the appellees. It is the last thing they would want done, as they have said in no uncertain terms. Yet it is the only thing of a judicial nature that we have decided in our Majority Opinion, and it is beyond the parameters of this lawsuit.2
We were only asked to decide one issue in this lawsuit: whether the General Assembly has responded adequately to its constitutional responsibility. This is a political question, pure and simple. We have undertaken to “enter upon policy determinations for which judicially manageable standards are lacking.” Baker v. Carr, supra, 369 U.S. at 226, 82 S.Ct. at 715. Without such standards, a case is not justi-ciable. It is not enough to decide that Kentucky does not have an “efficient system of common schools throughout the State,” as Section 183 of the Constitution requires, without specifying what statutes are unconstitutional, and why. Yet, the former is not asked, and the latter is not possible. I repeat, this case is not justicia-ble.
II. THE PROBLEMS RELATED TO THE PARTIES
Essentially, the plaintiffs comprise two groups, one consisting of sixty-six local school districts represented through the Council for Better Education plus seven more school districts specifically named, and a second consisting of twenty-two public school students suing as individuals.
Turning first to the school districts, it should be obvious from a legal standpoint that these school districts have no authori*226ty to sue the General Assembly, their creator, over the circumstances of their existence. As stated in Board of Ed. of Louisville v. Board of Ed. of Jefferson County, Ky., 458 S.W.2d 6, 8-9, (1970), quoted but disregarded in the Majority Opinion:
“Certainly there are no constitutional guarantees that local school districts, which are purely creatures of the legislature in their creation and alteration, must be regarded by the legislature as autonomous fiefdoms for all purposes, particularly in face of the plenary power vested in the legislature by section 183 of the Constitution of Kentucky as regards the common schools of the state. Id. at 8.
This would seem to be conclusive of the matter. But if a case factually to the point is needed, East Jackson Public Schools v. State, 133 Mich.App. 132, 348 N.W.2d 303 (1984), should be persuasive. In a suit seeking to declare Michigan’s school financing unconstitutional because it produced unequal per student funding between districts, the Michigan court held, inter alia, that the school districts did not have standing “to defy their creator over the terms of their existence.... [o]r to expend public funds to finance such litigation.” 348 N.W.2d at 306. We should hold the same. Cases from other jurisdictions cited to the contrary, and footnoted in our Majority Opinion, are without exception fundamentally unsound as judicial precedents because they fail to address this question. They also fail to deal with the inherent limitations upon the scope of judicial activity and the constitutional limitations mandated by the doctrine of separation of powers.
The next group of parties-plaintiff is twenty-two students, suing by and through their parents as next friends, who most certainly would have standing to sue, but who had no right to relief unless and until first they pleaded and proved they had been damaged in some specific manner by a named defendant’s violation of their constitutional rights. No evidence was presented that such was the case.
Only five of the students were even mentioned in the proof, and only one of these five testified, a ninth grade student in the Dayton Independent School District system who said there were computer courses she would like to take if available, and that only Spanish, not French or Latin, were offered in her school. Certainly this evidence falls short of proving a case on her behalf. There is no evidence at all to sustain the claims of the remaining plaintiffs.
The fundamental error in the trial court, and in our Court, is that the claims of these individual students were treated as a vehicle for a class action on behalf of the entire student body of Kentucky seeking declarative judgment relief against the General Assembly. The students were given relief of a nature appropriate to a class action, not to the violation of their individual rights. These students never legally represented anybody but themselves. None of the requirements for a class action were followed. Nevertheless, the trial court referred to the students and their parents as “representing as a class all similarly situated students in Kentucky’s districts.”
Our Majority Opinion acknowledges that the trial court erred, that “there was no class action.” But, as in the trial court, in our Majority Opinion the relief granted was of a type appropriate to a class action, but wholly inappropriate to a suit by an individual student seeking a judicial remedy for a specific deprivation of rights. There was no proof supporting their claim as individuals and they had no right to relief as representatives of the class.
The problems with parties-defendant are even more glaring and insurmountable. The ease below included as defendants the Governor, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the State Treasurer, and the State Board of Education, as well as the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Governor, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the State Treasurer, and the State Board of Education, although appearing in the suit below, took no appeal from the final judgments, presumably because their authority was not seriously challenged nor were they required to do *227anything specific by its terms. John A. Rose, President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and Donald J. Blandford, Speaker of the House of Representatives, are the only parties-defendant on this appeal.3
The fundamental problem is, of course, how does one sue the General Assembly, a legislative body but not a body corporate, to force them to take action, or to declare unconstitutional their actions or nonactions not embodied in any specific legislation. The General Assembly does not exist as a legal entity apart from its specific legislative acts. Our Majority Opinion cites as authority Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1 of King Cty. v. State, 90 Wash.2d 476, 585 P.2d 71 (1978), but this case never discussed by what authority the legislature of the State of Washington can be sued by naming the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate. On the other hand, the Dissenting Opinion by Justice Rosellini in the State of Washington case, joined by two others, does address the problem:
“The real and only party against whom relief is demanded is the legislature and that body is one which is not amenable to suit.... [T]he people have seen fit to protect the members of their legislature from harassment by litigants while they are in session (Const, art. 2, § 16). [Note: Our Kentucky Constitution does likewise in § 43; see Wiggins v. Stuart, Ky.App., 671 S.W.2d 262 (1984) ]. When they are not in session, they are not a legislature.
The legislature is not a corporate body, and its officers are not authorized to accept service on behalf of their fellow members. Furthermore, it is contrary to the nature of our representative form of government to permit interference by the court with the internal functioning of the legislature.” [Emphasis added.] 585 P.2d at 127.
Using a very liberal procedural construction, our Majority Opinion reaches the conclusion that the President Pro Tempore and Speaker of the House “were in fact named in a representative capacity.” The question is, representing who? Certainly not the individuals who will serve in the next General Assembly. This Court cannot assert power over these future legislators to direct their future actions or to punish them for contempt if they fail to legislate in response to our mandate in a manner that we deem appropriate.
In Legislative Research Comm’n v. Brown, Ky., 664 S.W.2d 907 (1984), wherein it was the General Assembly trying to expand the nature of its legislative function rather than the judiciary seeking to direct it, we stated:
“The Kentucky General Assembly is not one of continuous session_ A legislative body ceases to exist at the moment of its adjournment.” 664 S.W.2d at 915.
The Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate were elected to preside at the last legislative session. They cannot be designated as representatives of a body that “ceases to exist.” Under our Constitution the House of Representatives and the Senate have power to choose officers anew “biannually.” Ky. Const. § 34. This means they must be elected anew every two years, when the General Assembly regenerates and reorganizes as provided for in the Kentucky Constitution § 36. Who is the legal representative for the next General Assembly between sessions when it has no official existence? For that matter, who is to say that an order entered against the leadership while in session is binding upon the members of the General Assembly?
In sum, it is pure fiction, not legal fiction, to hold that the President Pro Tem-pore and the Speaker of the House at the last legislative session represent the General Assembly, or that the General Assembly is before this Court in this case for purposes of adjudication. This is a lawsuit *228with no defendants. It is one thing to order a school district to take some specific actions required by the constitution or statutes, or to desist from actions contrary thereto, as was done in Wooley v. Spalding, Ky., 293 S.W.2d 563 (1956), and quite a different thing to declare unconstitutional the action of legislators as individuals or as a body in failing to enact “appropriate legislation” to “provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the State [Ky. Const. § 183],” particularly when we have not been asked to designate any specific legislation as constitutionally inappropriate. A school district is a legal entity created by statute with a corporate existence. Its actions as a body may be judicially reviewed and it may be ordered as a body by a court to take certain specific actions that the law requires. Such is not the case with our General Assembly.
Finally, there is one further procedural problem when we undertake to order legislators what to do. The manner in which legislative power is exercised, like judicial power, is discretionary. It is fundamental premise of mandamus against public officials in the exercise of legislative or judicial power, that mandamus will not lie to compel the exercise of a discretionary power in any particular way. Fannin v. Keck, Ky., 296 S.W.2d 226 (1956); Childers v. Stephenson, Ky., 320 S.W.2d 797 (1959); Kaufman v. Humphrey, Ky., 329 S.W.2d 575 (1959). Thus, even had we the power to order the General Assembly to enact new or different legislation on the subject of school financing or management of the public school system, it is beyond our power to suggest what the remedial legislation should be.
We have exceeded the judicial power vested in the Court of Justice by Section 109 of the Constitution and violated the doctrine of separation of powers constitu-tionalized in Sections 27 and 28 of the Kentucky Constitution.
At the heart of this case is the problem created by the uneven tax base for support in a public school system that is built on local property taxes. This problem is not unique to our state. Supreme courts from several of our sister states, confronted with this problem and caught up in a rush of judicial activism, have attempted to intervene judicially in the legislative process. None have undertaken to intervene where the issues were as nonspecific as presented here, and thus as incapable of judicial resolution. Further, as subsequent cases from West Virginia and New Jersey attest, when they intervened in the process their initial rulings were just the beginning of a long-running dialogue. They have been confronted with complex sequels to original decisions that did not improve matters significantly in the first place. They have been inundated with subsequent litigation.
An appreciation of the difference between legislative and judicial lawmaking is essential to maintaining constitutionally mandated separation of powers. Speaking to the constitutional limitations inherent in the separation of powers doctrine, in Valley Forge College v. Americans United, 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700, 709 (1982), the United States Supreme Court explains that the “actual controversies” principle:
“at an irreducible minimum ... requires the party who invokes the court’s authority to ‘show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant,’ [Citation omitted], and that the injury ‘fairly can be traced to the challenged action’ and ‘is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision,’ [Citation omitted]_ [Judicial power [is limited] ‘to those disputes which confine ... courts to a rule consistent with a system of separated powers and which are traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial process.’ ” [Emphasis added.]
The case now before us fails to meet this “irreducible minimum” necessary to invoke judicial power.
This same concept is thus explained by legal historian G. Edward White of the University of Virginia School of Law in his recent book, The American Judicial Tradition, 2d ed., p. 461 (1988):
*229“The power of judges pertains only to those matters peculiarly ‘legal,’ as distinguished from political.... [T]he burden of judicial opinion-writing, then, has been to show that a decision has not been grounded on other than ‘legal’ considerations, and that within that ambit it analyzes legal issues in an intelligible fashion.”
Since publication of the initial Majority Opinion three months ago, the predominant reaction from the public, the press, and the politicians, has been that our decision provides the Governor and General Assembly an unprecedented opportunity to reform a deficient state educational process. The operative word is “opportunity,” not “power,” because the General Assembly has always had the same “power” it has now to reform the system. We have not enhanced its power. Unfortunately, providing opportunities at the expense of the integrity of the judicial process is not a traditional item on the judicial agenda, nor in my view an appropriate role for the courts.
Our Majority Opinion is fundamentally unsound, not because there is no problem but because the case does not present issues capable of judicial resolution. We have now become part of the problem when we intend to be part of the solution.

. By "throughout" I do not mean everywhere, but simply not in all school districts. For examples to the contrary: Woodford County has been praised as a "model” district; Jefferson County has been recently televised nationally as an example of a successful program.

. The Response to the Petition for Rehearing filed by the appellee, Council for Better Education, requests us to add this clarification to the Majority Opinion:
"The record in this case clearly shows that no school district in Kentucky is overfunded. No district is funded to the level of the National average. Therefore, to take money from one district and give it to another would be a step toward a mediocre system statewide. This would violate Section 183 of the constitution and would not be approved by this Court.”
Perhaps, since we are prepared to enter the political arena, we should be prepared to go this extra mile.

. The judgment is final as to the Governor, whether meaningless or not. Nevertheless, Justice Gant’s Opinion suggests that the case "should be remanded to the Franklin Circuit Court with direction to immediately issue writs of mandamus requiring the Governor to call an Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly." This shows how far one’s thinking can go once we forget we are confined to the limitations of a justiciable controversy.