Court Opinion

ID: 9851441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:12:47.452533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:56.099317
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
specially concurring.
Although not necessarily adopting the rationale of the court in granting the relief requested in this appeal nor denying the logic of the dissents, I join the majority by this special concurrence from a different persuasion, based on the historical developments of the judicial article within the Wyoming Constitution. This history, provided in 1890 by Art. 5, Judicial Department, established in § 1 that:
“The judicial power of the state shall be vested in the senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, in a supreme court, district courts, justices of the peace, courts of arbitration and such courts as the legislature may, by general law, establish for incorporated cities or incorporated towns.”
As was then considered and now noted both in this court’s opinion and in dissents, the Constitution also, as encompassing the salary-change limitations of both Art. 5, § 17 and Art. 3, § 32 when applied to the extended terms provided for the judiciary, had created an anomaly of differentiated salaries dependent upon date of election of members. This recognized unfairness led the legislature to present, and the electorate to ratify, a constitutional change of that section in 1953 by the equality salary provision now provided in Art. 5, § 17:
“*** provided, however, that when any legislative increase or decrease in the salary of justices or judges of such courts whose respective terms of office do not expire at the same time, has heretofore or shall hereafter become effective as to any member of such court, it shall be effective from such date as to each of the members thereof.”
In the decade that followed, a broad-based reaction, under the sponsorship of the Wyoming State Bar and the League of Women Voters, to the constitutionalized justice of the peace courts matured to legislative presentation and electorate adoption of the 1965 constitutional amendment effective January 17, 1967, which changed the Wyoming judicial structure as now provided in Art. 5, § 1:
“The judicial power of the state shall be vested in the senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, in a supreme court, district courts, and such subordinate courts as the legislature may, by general law, establish and ordain from time to time.”
Although the electorate had progressively spoken by adoption of the constitutional amendment, any replacement system as a substitute for the part-time justice of the *970peace as the first general level of adjudication was buffeted in change to the county court system by local provincialism and operational costs then, and continued to date, by an extremely difficult birth and maturity process.
County courts were originally established in only two counties, Laramie and Natrona, by Ch. 261, S.L. of Wyoming 1971. The law was first legislatively tailored so that county judges could only be available in those two counties, with an effective date of January 1, 1975, to be selected by popular election in the fashion of the superseded justices of the peace. Heavy and continued modernization demands from progressive elements of the Wyoming justice-delivery system, accommodated by action of the legislature, not only expanded very substantially the availability of the county courts, but also invoked Art. 5, § 4(b) of the Constitution to effect a modified Missouri-plan method of selection and retention by Ch. 45, S.L. of Wyoming 1978, § 5-5-111, W.S.1977, 1987 Cum.Supp. With selection and retention addressed for those judges in identical fashion as was required for the other full-time judges and justices of the state, the jurisdiction of the county courts was also expanded to encompass a significant area of the adjudicative function formally reserved to the district courts in earlier time when only the predecessor justice of the peace courts had existed.
In 1971, when the law was enacted to be effective in 1975, the legislature provided that the county court would have jurisdiction concurrently with district courts in a general civil case level of $1,000, criminal jurisdiction of misdemeanors, and a provision for preliminary hearings of felony offenses. In succeeding legislation, in addition to similarity by selection pursuant to the provisions of Art. 5, § 4 of the Constitution, the county courts were given exclusive jurisdiction for all actions in an amount not exceeding $7,000, and more specific criminal authority, including adjudication of high misdemeanors for all non-felony offenses. Further provision was made to constitute the district court as an intermediate appellate court for appeal from decisions of the county court, both criminal and civil. With the enactment of this exclusive jurisdiction by elimination of concurrent jurisdiction, combined with the nonpartisan selection and retention process, it is apparent that the functioning county court embraced not only an area of responsibility previously exercised by the justice of the peace courts, but also a singular arena of adjudicatory jurisdiction which had previously been vested solely in the district court.
My consideration of the applicability of Art. 5, § 1 to the earlier existent Art. 5, § 17 affords no logical basis to continue a discrimination against a class of full-time judges solely on the basis of its nomenclature, without regard for the intrinsic nature of the judicial function involved. Peterson v. Speakman, 49 Ariz. 342, 66 P.2d 1023 (1937). In practical application, this court considers whether the constraining general language of Art. 3, § 32 applies a continued salary limitation to the judicial article after adoption of the equalization amendment for types of courts not then in existence. I reject that result as did the legislature in the enacted salary bill which is here in question.
It is apparent that in enacting the salary increase by Ch. 218, S.L. of Wyoming 1985, the legislature intended an effective date as soon as constitutionally possible and rejected salary discrimination if, within their power, avoidance could be achieved.
“When a new salary is effective for any judge of a county court upon new appointment or the commencement of a new term, it shall be effective for all judges of the county courts.” (Emphasis added.)
The further language, “subject to constitutional provisions concerning when the salaries can be effective, to be paid by the state,” was obviously intended to deter the increase from the effective date of July 1, 1985 until the effectuation process of Art. 5, § 17 of the Constitution could be applied. From the specific language used in the salary-increase law, it is apparent that the legislature then intended, as I now conclude, that the appointment or retention-*971election of a new county judge would provide the constitutional basis for all judges to similarly and simultaneously receive the increased compensation. It is in this regard that I may differ with both the majority and the dissents, because each separately, although for totally different reasons, seems, in effect, to hold that the specific provision of the salary-increase statute is constitutionally invalid by a rejection of the simultaneous effective date for all judges of the county courts as effective upon the commencement of a term for any one of the members.
Likewise apparent for the denial of enacted salary benefit is the absence of any basis for differentiation premised on function or responsibility, since the denial determination is only justified by application of the title applied to the separate classes of judicial officers. If, for example, in creating this people’s court trial system, as both a substitute for the justices of peace and a portion of the function of the district court the name of the class of judges had been entitled as district judges category B, the constructional question would have been eliminated. Likewise, if the present county courts had been named district courts, and the district courts renamed superior courts, little question would exist that the application of the salary equalized provision to all members of each of these levels of the judiciary would result.
I relate the Constitution in interest and effect to the functional nature of the justice-delivery system. Obviously, county courts, circuit courts, trial courts, or any other designated categorization, could not have been included at the passage of the constitutional amendment to Art. 5, § 17, since at that time the kinds of courts were constitutionally limited to “supreme courts, district courts, justices of the peace, courts of arbitration” and municipal courts. I would find intent in the expansion of the section to retain its ameliorative effect for similar functional systems. Obviously, if someone in authority had been able to think all of this out, the more specific terminology might have been included, as it was in the subsequently adopted Art. 5, § 4(b), to provide equivalency of status to the developing county court system after constitutional authorization for establishment of the alternate class of courts had been achieved by the 1967 amendment.1
Furthermore, it has to be noted, if one relates to historical perspective, that in current time with passage of the minimum jurisdiction amounts for the county courts, and in provisions for certiorari provided by § 5-2-119, W.S.1977, and Rule 13, W.R. A.P., the historical function of the supreme court, as envisioned by the monumental debate in the constitutional convention, has been significantly changed by the application to the district courts of an appellate function not then contemplated.2 Likewise *972to be considered is that in 1966 the civil jurisdiction of the justice of the peace court was $200 (concurrent jurisdiction in the district court above $100), and criminal jurisdiction then as now excluded high misdemeanors. The county courts today embrace more than half the case responsibility in high misdemeanors and the $7,000 exclusive jurisdiction which once was embodied by assignment to the district court.
My conclusion on this issue of constitutional salary interpretation denies determination by a name unrelated to function and essential characteristics. Logic also tells me that I do no harm to the concept of the public employee salary limitation which serves as a severe and well-founded question in dissent. Cf. Blackburn v. Board of County Commissioners of Park County, 67 Wyo. 494, 226 P.2d 784 (1951); Ballangee v. Board of County Commissioners of Fremont County, 66 Wyo. 890, 212 P.2d 71 (1949); Reals v. Smith, 8 Wyo. 159, 56 P. 690 (1899).
In this analysis, I apply a rational interpretation in constitutional analysis consistent with an evolving society. The comparison may seem in part to be mundane, but I see no difference in the attitude and application afforded by the premier jurist in the history of the state of Wyoming, Fred H. Blume, where in Chicago & Northwestern Railway Co. v. Hall, 46 Wyo. 380, 26 P.2d 1071, 1073 (1933), the court was called to determine the status of railroad tie-preserving plants in a constitutional context for taxation as something that was not in existence when the Constitution had been written:
“ * * * [I]t is apparently argued by counsel for defendant that tie-preserving plants were not in use in 1889; that they were not in the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution or of the people; and that they cannot, accordingly, be considered as embraced in, or contemplated by, the section of the Constitution now under consideration. This contention, we think, is too broad. The section is a part of our organic law. The Constitution is, in a sense, a living thing, designed to meet the needs of a progressive society, amid all the detailed changes to which such society is subject. * * * Hence, though tie-preserving plants were not in existence at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, still, if it can be said that the language used in the section under consideration, naturally construed, may fairly be said to embrace them, we would not be justified in excluding them therefrom merely for the reason that they were not in existence at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.”
I find in the fact that county courts did not exist and could not have existed at the time of the passage of the ameliorative constitutional equalization provision, that, fairly contemplated, all courts of a similar kind with a function and operation as then not identified could not be expected at a future time to fall beyond the remedies then intended. Following the constitutional amendment which was adopted to permit the establishment of the county courts, I now deny requirement of another constitutional amendment to afford to these newly established and constitutionally permitted elements of the judiciary the same standard of equalized compensation for similar responsibility. On a similar subject of equality of voting, see Schaefer v. Thomson, 240 F.Supp. 247 (D.Wyo.1964).
It is recognized that it may seem somewhat constrained to compare a new kind of industry in constitutional terms with the adaptation of a third system of courts, but this causes me no difficulty in concurrence and recognition of the impreeiseness of legislative capacity to exactly identify the future and my recognition of function over name or formalism as the test of effectuated definition and responsibility.
*973This utilization of the living Constitution policy standard enunciated by Justice Blume many years before the current colloquy initiated by politically inspired revisionism as a philosophy of the law in no regard lessens the appropriate precedent and teaching of those early jurists of this state.3 In Grand Island & Northern Wyoming Railroad Co. v. Baker, 6 Wyo. 369, 45 P. 494, 496 (1896), Justice Potter, who was a member of the constitutional convention, re-emphasized:
“ * * * If the people of the commonwealth, by adopting a constitution, have committed themselves to a mistaken policy, the only remedy is an amendment by constitutional methods, of that instrument. Within the province of the legislature, recourse must be had to that body for the correction of any errors of policy which may have induced its enactments. The jurisdiction of the courts extends only to the construction and enforcement of the constitution and laws as they exist. That jurisdiction should be zealously guarded, but not used as a cloak to encroach upon the functions of the other departments of government.”
I would not find this rule, nor the Blume philosophy, to singularly differ from the pronouncements in Rasmussen v. Baker, 7 Wyo. 117, 50 P. 819, 822 (1897):
“So, the language of the constitution is to be understood in the sense in which it was used at the time when it was adopted.”
Seventy years ago, this court in an extended constitutional review summarized:
“The general principles governing the construction of statutes apply to the construction of constitutions. 12 C.J. 699. And the fundamental purpose in such construction is to ascertain the intent of the framers and the people who adopted it, and give effect thereto. 12 C.J. 700. And an amendment will prevail over a provision of the original Constitution inconsistent with the amendment. 12 C.J. 709. The amendment, being the latest expression of the will of the people, cannot be limited or controlled by previous existing provisions of the Constitution. In construing the amendment the court should keep in view the Constitution as it was before it was amended, the evil to be remedied, and the terms of the amendment. Ferrell v. Keel, 105 Ark. 380, 151 S.W. 269.
“ ‘The safe way is to read its language in connection with the known condition of affairs out of which the occasion for its adoption may have arisen, and then to construe it, if there be therein any doubtful expressions, in a way, so far as is reasonably possible, to forward the known purpose or object for which the amendment was adopted. * * *’ Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 602, 20 Sup.Ct. 448, 494, 44 L.Ed. 597.” Zancanelli v. Central Coal & Coke Co., 25 Wyo. 511, 173 P. 981, 991 (1918).
This conclusion does no ill justice to the intent of the 1953 legislature when, by passage of House Joint Resolution No. 5, the endorsed statement was adopted for electorate vote and with that success to be now applied:
“This proposed amendment to the Constitution to the State of Wyoming allows the Legislature by law to fix during their terms the salaries of Justices and Judges of the Supreme Court and the District Courts, so that each justice and each judge performing similar duties will receive like salaries.”4
Consequently, I believe this court will accurately apply both the intent of the con*974stitutional amendment and the expressed desire of the legislature in determination that the pay increase was equally applicable for all judges of the county court with the commencement of the term of those newly retained in popular election by the November, 1986 vote.
Based on this history of the development of the Wyoming Constitution, I join with the court in determination that the writ should issue.5

. In 1890, Art. 3, § 32 of the Constitution provided in relevant part:
“Except as otherwise provided in this constitution, no law shall extend the term of any public officer or increase or diminish his salary or emolument after his election or appointment * * *.”
Article 5, § 17 provided:
“The judges of the supreme and district courts shall receive such compensation for their services as may be prescribed by law, which compensation shall not be increased or diminished during the term for which a judge shall have been elected, and the salary of a judge of the supreme or district court shall be as may be prescribed by law."
By the 1953 amendment, Art. 3, § 32 was unchanged, and Art. 5, § 17 was restated:
“The judges of the supreme and district courts shall receive such compensation for their services as may be prescribed by law, which compensation shall not be increased or diminished during the term for which a judge shall have been elected, and the salary of a judge of the supreme or district court shall be as may be prescribed by law; provided, however, that when any legislative increase or decrease in the salary of the justices or judges of such courts whose respective terms of office do not expire at the same time, has heretofore or shall hereafter become effective as to any member of such court, it shall be effective from such date as to each of the members thereof.”

. One of the major debates of the 1889 Wyoming constitutional convention, as raised in three separate sequences, was whether or not there should be a supreme court at all, or whether the constituency of the district bench should en banc constitute the appellate tribunal. After extended and continued debate, the independent supreme court was only approved by the rather minimal vote in the convention of 21 *972tó 17 in the late stages of the composition process of the present Wyoming Constitution. See Journals and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Wyoming, pp. 330-338, 478-495, 514-533 (1893). Now, for the first time, a total automatic right of direct appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court in every case no longer exists, since as to municipal, justice of the peace, and county courts, the district courts serve as the intermediate courts of appeal.

. See among a multitude of current writing a recent article, McGraw and Crittenden, The Role of Original Intent in Reading a Two Hundred Year Old Constitution, 90 W.Va.L.Rev. 17 (1987).

. In retrospect, it is interesting to note some of the membership of the legislature who voted for passage in the House by 50 votes in favor, 2 opposed, and 4 excused, including lawyers John F. Sullivan, Robert S. "Stan" Lowe, T.C. Daniels, E. Keith Thomson, William A. Riner, Jr., William F. Swanton. Those in the Senate voting in favor included lawyers Byron Hirst, David Hitchcock, and Thomas O. Miller; the vote was not so favorable in the Senate, initially failing passage by 17 in favor, 8 opposed, and 2 excused, and then, upon reconsideration, 19 in favor, 7 opposed, and 1 excused.

. In practical difference with the plurality, I would apply the constitutional limitations for any salary increase (or decrease) for judges of the county courts except as permitted by the equalization proviso of Art. 5, § 17, while the plurality decision would deny any constraining constitutional limitation. In this case it makes no difference, since I specially concur in approving the date of institution of litigation rather than the earlier date of January 5, 1987 which would have been otherwise constitutionally established.