Court Opinion

ID: 9792037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:22:17.635361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:40.333278
License: Public Domain

Reed, J.
(concurring)—In the Hohfeldian10 scheme of things, a "right" distinctively is of a higher order than a privilege, invitation, or license. In my view the burglary statute implicitly excludes anyone having a "right" to be on the premises, as for example one's home. One having a right to enter cannot be guilty of unlawful entry. The statute addresses only those who need some type of special permission in the way of invitation or license or are somehow otherwise privileged to enter—a fireman in case of emergency, e.g.
So long as defendant Howe's fundamental or natural right to enter his own home has not been altered by court order or by his emancipation, he cannot be guilty of unlawfully entering or remaining. Short of such a change in legal relationships, the parents' expressed prohibition will never serve to render unlawful such an entry or remaining.
I stop short of endorsing the majority's statement on page 70 that parents have a "superior" right of possession. I agree wholeheartedly that a parent need not submit to "tyranny," but I believe the remedy is not to cast the child into the street. There are other avenues—hedged about with due process—by which a parent may obtain relief in *74such situations. I do, of course, agree that nothing precludes punishment for any theft or other crime committed by the child while on the premises.
With the above reservations, I concur.
Review granted at 115 Wn.2d 1001 (1990).

Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 23 Yale L.J. 16 (1913).