Court Opinion

ID: 9732155
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:09:54.866532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:24.179166
License: Public Domain

BRAUER, J., Concurring.
I join in the holding. But while I am of course bound by People v. Ramirez (1979) 25 Cal.3d 260 [158 Cal.Rptr. 316, 599 *1487P.2d 622], I must cry out in protest whenever occasion arises against the “separate state ground” doctrine, the endeavor of the California Supreme Court to infuse different meaning into language of the California Constitution which is essentially identical to that of its federal counterpart,1 and thereby to accord certain Californians greater rights and others correspondingly less protection2 than are guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
In People v. Ramirez, supra, 25 Cal. 3d 260, our Supreme Court did not even make an effort to base its interpretation of the state due process clause on an expression or other evidence of intent on the part of the enactors. Such effort would have been unavailing. No persuasive evidence has ever been cited and none can be cited that the delegates drafting the clause or the People in adopting it intended it to have different significance or impact from its federal model.3
It is ironic that in the early 1950’s, my generation of idealistic law students and our professors took every opportunity to urge upon the high court that it interpret the Fourteenth Amendment so as to encompass the Bill of Rights, thus assuring each person in the land, whether he live in Massachusetts or Mississippi, the same fundamental rights. Our hopes were realized in essentials.4
But by the 1970’s, some state courts had grown restive at what they viewed as the slow pace of change coming down. And so they discovered their state constitutions. It was a marvelous idea: Here was an avenue for *1488the courts to make law consistent with the justices’ predilections. Their legislatures were powerless to override them5 as the judiciary claimed to derive its authority from a higher source. And the United States Supreme Court stayed its unifying hand; it has always followed Cardozo’s teaching that “[a] judgment by the highest court of a state as to the meaning and effect of its own constitution is decisive and controlling everywhere.”6
To concede the power, however, is not to justify every exercise of it. As a consequence of 15 years’ state court activism, there is as much disparity in the rights of the citizens of the various states as there are states.
I respectfully submit that unless text or history7 points to a difference in meaning, “the newly discovered separate and independent state constitutional interpretations”8 are conceptually unwarranted as well as being unworthy in purpose. Our Supreme Court should repudiate this mischievous fiction.

 United States Constitution, Amendment XIV, section 1: “. . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;. . . .” California Constitution, Article I, section 7(a): “A person may not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law . . . .” Article I, section 15: “Persons may not... be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

 At issue here is the right of a person who was retired from police work for inability to cope with stress to carry a concealed weapon.
The thesis that additional rights granted to one person are not fashioned out of thin air but are purchased at the expense of other persons and values was compellingly argued by Justice Macklin Fleming in The Price of Perfect Justice (Basic Books, Inc. 1974). See especially part I, chapter 1: The Ideal of Perfectibility.

In People v. Anderson (1972) 6 Cal.3d 628 [100 Cal.Rptr. 152, 493 P.2d 880] the California Supreme Court made an effort to find historical evidence for distinguishing the “cruel and/or unusual punishment” clauses of the federal and California Constitutions. It did not succeed. (See Brauer, J., concurring in People v. Celaya (1987) 191 Cal.App.3d 665, 674-675 [236 Cal.Rptr. 489].)

See e.g., Wolf v. Colorado (1949) 338 U.S. 25 [93 L.Ed. 1782, 69 S.Ct. 1359]; Mapp v. Ohio (1961) 367 U.S. 643 [6 L.Ed.2d 1081, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 84 A.L.R.2d 933]; Robinson v. California (1962) 370 U.S. 660 [8 L.Ed.2d 758, 82 S.Ct. 1417]; Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) 372 U.S. 335 [9 L.Ed,2d 799, 83 S.Ct. 792, 93 A.L.R.3d 733]; Pointer v. Texas (1965) 380 U.S. 400 [13 L.Ed.2d 923, 85 S.Ct. 1065].

 “As history amply proves, the judiciary is prone to misconceive the public good by confounding private notions with constitutional requirements, and such misconceptions are not subject to legitimate displacement by the will of the people except at too slow a pace. (Frankfurter, J., concurring in A. F. ofL. v. American Sash Co.” (1949) 335 U.S. 538 at pp. 555-556 [93 L.Ed. 222, 232, 69 S.Ct. 258, 6 A.L.R.2d 481].)

Highland Farms Dairy v. Agnew (1937) 300 U.S. 608, 613 [81 L.Ed. 835, 840, 57 S.Ct. 549].

See Clark, J., dissenting in People v. Pettingill (1978) 21 Cal.3d 231, 253 [145 Cal.Rptr. 861, 578 P.2d 108],

 Richardson, J., dissenting in People v. Disbrow (1976) 16 Cal.3d 101, 120 [127 Cal.Rptr. 360, 545 P.2d 272],