Court Opinion

ID: 9736387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:54:26.896215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:06.382813
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
concurring
T1 Anglo-American law teaches that all judicial decisions in a system must conform to the precedential pronouncements of its highest court.1 In Oklahoma the tribunal accorded that status for noneriminal cases is her Supreme Court.2 Only those pronouncements by the Court of Civil Appeals which are declared to be precedential by the Supreme Court may claim precedential status.3
12 Under serutiny here for conformity to precedent is an opinion by the Court of Civil Appeals (COCA). A three-judge panel of that court, which considered this ease, carved out an exception to this court's precedential pronouncement. That exception had been earlier rejected by another panel in a published opinion.4 Today's opinion by this court disapproves of the COCA departure from ruling precedent, deeming it to be unwarranted. I join the court's pronouncement which gives full support to the legal system's need for conformity to long-standing public-law precedent. Both the functionaries of our government, state and local, as well as the public dealing with them, must strictly conform to the norms of conduct fashioned by precedential jurisprudence of this court for their claims vis-a-vis each other (and defenses against them).5
13 Caselaw must remain unchanged until it is altered by the precedent-setting tribunal. Stability and consistency are of utmost importance. Disrepute of, and lack of faith in, our legal system will inevitably follow from an unpredictably changeable and nonuniform public-law jurisprudence.

. Rupert Cross, Precedent in English Law, pgs. 103 et seq. (1st ed. 1961).

. Art. 7 § 4, Okl. Const.; In re M.B., 2006 OK 63, ¶ 8, 145 P.3d 1040, 1044; Smith v. Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections, 2001 OK 95, ¶ 6, 37 P.3d 872, 873.

. 20 0.S.2001 § 30.5; 20 O.S.2001 § 30.14(C); Okla.Sup.Ct.R. 1.200(c)(2), 12 O.S.2001, Ch. 15, App.1; Manley v. Brown, 1999 OK 79, ¶ 9 n. 9, 989 P.2d 448, 452 n. 9.

. Taylor v. State ex rel. Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, 1993 OK CIV APP 195, 867 P.2d 490.

. "When a dispute presents a public-law controversy, we are generally free to grant corrective relief upon any applicable legal theory disposi-tive of the case and supported by the record." State v. Torres, 2004 OK 12, ¶ 7, 87 P.3d 572, 578; City of Enid v. Public Employees Relations Bd., 2006 OK 16, ¶ 21, 133 P.3d 281, 289 (citing Special Indemnity Fund v. Reynolds, 1948 OK 14, ¶ 6, 199 Okla. 570, 188 P.2d 841, 842).