Court Opinion

ID: 9429307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:26:23.959862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:18.683420
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring in the judgment.
This case raises a question of state fiscal policy. If the Mayor of the City of Revere had paid this bill because he had been advised by his attorney, or by the Attorney General of *247the State, that it was an obligation of the municipality, we would have had no interest in the matter, even if the legal advice had misinterpreted federal law. If the Massachusetts Legislature had passed a statute requiring bills of this character to be paid by the city, the performance of a city’s state statutory obligation would give rise to no federal question. That would be true even if the legislative history of the statute made it perfectly clear that every lawmaker who voted for the bill did so because he believed that the Federal Constitution required the State to allocate the cost in this manner.
Because the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts— rather than another branch of state government — invoked the Federal Constitution in imposing an expense on the City of Revere, this Court has the authority to review the decision. But is it a sensible exercise of discretion to wield that authority? I think not. There is “nothing in the Federal Constitution that prohibits a State from giving lawmaking power to its courts.” Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U. S. 456, 479 (1981) (Stevens, J., dissenting). No individual right was violated in this case. The underlying issue of federal law has never before been deemed an issue of national significance. Since, however, the Court did (unwisely in my opinion) grant certiorari, I join its judgment.*

 I agree with the Court’s substantive analysis of this case, except for its assertion that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment would not be violated by the State’s imposition of cruel and unusual punishment on a prisoner before he has been convicted of a crime. I adhere to my views that the statements in support of that assertion in Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651 (1977), and Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520 (1979), simply cannot be squared with the text or the purpose of the Eighth Amendment. See Ingraham, supra, at 684-692 (White, J., dissenting).