Court Opinion

ID: 9857283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:27:38.64192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:24.834307
License: Public Domain

Griffin Smith, Chief Justice, dissenting. In administrative affairs and national legislation we have experienced the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and a prolonged discussion of their merits as distinguished from conservatism. We have the Eight Wing, the Left Wing, the Middle-of-the-Eoaders,, and the Neutrals; but judicially it had long been supposed that the common law processes as modified by statutes preserved the past, protected the present, and were unfailing guardians of the foreseeable future. Such familiar terms as mandamus, prohibition, certiorari, injunction, supersedeas, quo warranto, writ of error, and habeas corpus are to be found in Art. 7, § 4 of the Constitution. But I have searched in vain for any authority — either constitutional, statutory, implied, fringe-fraught, or suspected — other than the General Amnesty Act of May 26, 1952 (officially referred to as Hare v. General Contract Purchase Corporation, 220 Ark. 601, 249 S. W. 2d 973), whereby the fundamental law may be suspended, extended, or modified through utilization of the delightfully convenient judicial sedative spoken of as a caveat. We now have Caveat No. 1 and Caveat No. 2. What succeeding directives of convenience will deal with cannot, of course, be now determined. We must wait until the particular point of constitutional penetration is indicated before adjusting the natural offsprings of Caveat No. 1 and Caveat No. 2 to their appropriate roles. The thing to be remembered is that what cannot be reaehéd by law and equity is attainable by the caveat. I would reverse the decree and reaffirm some semblance of allegiance to the wisdom of those gentlemen who in convention at Little Bock September 7, 1874, subscribed to those basic principles so many liberty-loving people still hold dear.