Court Opinion

ID: 9690079
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:53:16.757213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:53.471728
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WM. A. BABLITCH
(dissenting). I join the dissenting opinion filed by Chief Justice Heffernan. Respectfully, I write only to address the concurring opinion which strongly urges the legislature to address this issue. My experience as a former member of the legislature tells me this: that will not happen.
In some legislation the legislature, recognizing that the future will bring issues to the fore that it *539cannot anticipate at the time of passage of the bill, meets its obligation to the future by placing the burden on the courts to deal with those issues consistent with its expressed intent. This is just such an issue. That is why the dissent by the Chief Justice is so very correct.
The Legislative Council highlighted the adoption statutes as just such legislation. The Council, in its notes to the bill, took great care to point out to the legislature that the proposed adoption legislation effected a major change in the area of future interpretation: that not only would the principle of best interest of the child remain but also that the principle of strict construction of the adoption statutes would be rejected in favor of liberal construction. The importance of that change cannot be overemphasized. The legislature was told that the committee of its peers, the Legislative Council, was recommending that courts be instructed not only to interpret this statute and the situations that arise under them in light of the best interest standard but also to do so liberally. This was the "red flag" that told the legislature that if it adopted this legislation, future interpretation of even the thorniest of issues would be left to the courts, with the only canon being liberal construction in the best interests of the child.
Thus, the legislature knew precisely what it was doing when it inserted into the adoption statutes the somewhat amorphous and vague directives to the courts that in interpreting these statutes, they "shall be liberally construed to effect the objectives contained in this section," sec. 48.01(2), Stats., and that "(t)he best interests of the child shall always be of paramount consideration . . Section 48.01(2). The legislature knew it could not anticipate all the situations that might arise in the future. It certainly knew, if by *540instinct only, that some of those issues would be very thorny indeed. And it most certainly knew, from experience alone, that future legislatures would be most reluctant to address the thorniest of them.
The legislature at times, as here, deliberately paints with a very broad and ambiguous brush. By design, it left the details to us, even the most controversial ones. We abdicate our responsibility by passing this back to the legislature, particularly when we know the likelihood of the legislature ever acting is minimal at best.
The legislature, by being deliberately ambiguous, is telling the courts, "We will not because we cannot spell out in detail every conceivable situation that might arise in the future, particularly the very sensitive ones. Look to the best interests of the child when these situations arise." As the dissent eloquently points out, everybody agrees what the best interests are here.