Court Opinion

ID: 9581614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:16:50.987246+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:08.106365
License: Public Domain

Chandler, Justice
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. In my opinion, it is for the General Assembly, and not this Court, to determine whether actions for alienation of affection have become outmoded.
This Court has repeatedly recognized that “if the law is to be changed, such change should come from the legislature.” Copeland v. Housing Authority of Spartanburg, 282 S.C. 8, 9, 316 S.E. (2d) 408, (1984). In Rogers v. Florence Printing Company, 233 S.C. 567, 574, 106 S.E. (2d) 258, 261-262 (1958), Justice Legge stated:
It is often the function of the courts by their judgments to establish public policy where none of the subject exists. But overthrow by the courts of existing public policy is quite another matter. That its establishment may have resulted from decisional, rather than statutory, law, is, in our opinion, immaterial. Once firmly rooted, such policy becomes in effect a rule of conduct or of property within the state. In the exercise of proper judicial self-restraint, *206the courts should leave it to the people, through their elected representatives in the General Assembly, to say whether or not it should be revised or discarded.
The General Assembly, in expressly abolishing actions for criminal conversation, was, significantly, silent on actions for alienation of affections; had the legislature intended to abrogate such actions, it could have done so. Retention by the General Assembly of the tort for alienation of affections presents a clear inference that the legislative branch considers this cause of action contributes to the preservation of marriage. I would defer to its wisdom.
In Fennell v. Littlejohn, 240 S.C. 189, 197, 125 S.E. (2d) 408 (1962), we stated
The relation once formed, the law steps in and holds the parties to various obligations and liabilities. It is an institution, in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.
[citing Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190, 8 S.Ct. 723, 31 L.Ed. 654 (1888)].
I respectfully dissent.