Court Opinion

ID: 9645234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:17:33.633115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:25.498191
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Cohen :
More than three years ago on April 19, 1965, we allowed appeals from the Superior Court’s determination in the above matters. The appeals were argued November 16, 1965; reargued May 3, 1966 and reargued for the second time November 29, 1967.
Contributing to this long delay was the action taken by our Court on November 19, 1965, permitting the lower court (from which the appeals had been taken) to engage counsel to represent the lower court in the appeals to our Court, advocating that the lower court’s determination be sustained. (See Gaskins Case, 430 Pa. 298, 244 A. 2d 662 (1968)). I cannot refrain from commenting upon the impropriety of such practice. I see no place in our judicial system for the intrusion of lower tribunals in proceedings of our Court. They tend only to confuse and disrupt, but more important their presence indicates overtones of objectives not compatible with justice. This unusual display of personal interest by a lower court demonstrates that the court was incompetent to have heard the litigation in the first instance.
I do not mean to imply any criticism of counsel, since I recognize the difficult position in which counsel is placed when requested by the lower court to represent it in appellate litigation. I do, however, severely criticize both the county court that activated *489the intervention, and onr Court which permitted and acquiesced in such an unusual procedure.1
While I concur and join in the opinion of Justice O’Brien, I cannot fail to observe that any other determination on the part of our Court would have required an analysis and decision concerning the applicability of Article I, Sections 6 and 9 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania, which provisions guarantee a defendant a trial by jury “as heretofore” provided. I am convinced there has never been a case in this Commonwealth, either before or after the adoption of our Constitution, where we have imposed an obligation to support a child born out of wedlock without affording the defendant a trial by jury if requested. To hold otherwise would in my view clearly violate those guarantees in our Constitution which are to remain inviolate.

 The citation in the footnote of the concurring opinion of tha Chief Justice demonstrates the author’s failure to recognize the problem. In Gault the Ohio Association of Juvenile Court Judges as amicus curiae urged affirmance before the U. S. Supreme Court, This intervention was allowed to the Association and not, as the Chief Justice seems to imply, to the very court from which the appeal was taken.