Court Opinion

ID: 9768515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 06:07:07.225527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:41.192646
License: Public Domain

LAMBERT, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority has acknowledged that Section 76 of the Constitution of Kentucky was modified in 1890 and the advice and consent provision of the earlier constitution removed therefrom. The majority suggests that this was to eliminate any conflict with Section 93 which provides that inferior state officers “may be appointed or elected, in such manner as may be prescribed by law....”1 This is a leap of logic which is unsustainable. It is inconceivable that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention could have intended to maintain the practice of Senate advice and consent while eliminating from the Constitution the very provision which expressly conferred such authority. To suggest that the *441delegates intended advice and consent to be authorized by the vague language which appeal’s in Section 93 is sophistry.
Among the most significant decisions in Kentucky constitutional law is Legislative Research Commission v. Brown, Ky., 664 S.W.2d 907 (1984), in which this Court undertook to rigidly enforce Sections 27 and 28 of the Kentucky Constitution, the separation of powers provision.
We should not abandon the philosophical principles that were incorporated by the framers of our present constitution. The purpose of the separation of powers doctrine is uncontroverted. The precedents established by this court have been uniform in retaining the goals set out by the framers. The separation of powers doctrine is set in the concrete of history and legal precedent. We will not overrule those cases and we will not, by the fiat of judicial legislation, change the clear and imperative meaning of our constitution. Such action is within the sole province of the voters of this Commonwealth.
We conclude that any statute subject to the scrutiny of Sections 27-28 of the Kentucky Constitution should be judged by a strict construction of those time-tested provisions.
Id., at 914.
This case and our recent decision in Kentucky Association of Realtors v. Musselman, Ky., 817 S.W.2d 213 (1991), amounts to a major retreat from the foregoing principles and authorizes another significant legislative incursion into executive domain. I dissented in Musselman and for the reasons explained therein, I dissent in this case. The wall of separation between the branches of government declared by Sections 27 and 28 is being dismantled and the determination expressed in LRC v. Brown is being ignored.
COMBS, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

. Since enactment of the statute at issue here, the Constitution of Kentucky, Section 93, was amended to expressly provide for Senate consent to the appointment of certain inferior state officers and members of boards and commissions. The amendment has no application here.