So to start out, I am not a lawyer, just a citizen that is concerned about the headline I woke up to this morning. If any lawyers or people more versed in legal procedures want to chime in and let me know if this is worthy as the amount of freak out I felt reading about this as the start of my day. Coffee, who needs coffee, the existential dread woke me right up.
Especially since Tricia Cotham defected to the Republican Party because *check notes* Democratic whips asked her to vote with the Democrats and she got flack for having a US flag sticker. But the Republicans will never pressure her or troll her about anything ever, they are always so nice to their own or something, so we will see how that goes.
WRAL reporting is the main reporting I will pull from about this new power as it is not behind a pay wall and I don’t know how much coverage this is getting as I didn’t see a whole lot more. This was based on 3 sentences they added to a ruling last week.
The case last week:
A Durham police sergeant fired after he allowed a suspect to smoke a marijuana blunt has filed new paperwork with the N.C. Supreme Court. The sergeant reminds the court that his controversial action helped end an armed standoff.
Back to WRAL analysis of the ruling
When the case ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court, the justices were at a loss for what to do. There were multiple legal issues and no clear consensus on how the court should rule.
“The justices’ questions revealed several alternative ways to decide the case, none of which could be reconciled with the others,” Republican Justice Richard Dietz wrote.
So apparently they punted it. In a 3 sentence, unsigned opinion (is this normal? this doesn’t sound normal but I don’t follow rulings that closely) they let the Court of Appeals ruling stand, but unpublished it.
Apparently this is rare procedural move, and normally one that is only used in certain specific unusual situations, none of which was present in this case. From what WRAL says, unpublished rulings can still stand, but are no longer part of the legal precedent that can be used in future cases.
“The Court is making a hasty and unexamined, yet fundamental and radically destabilizing shift in the authority to determine legal precedent,” Earls wrote in her dissent against the decision. “It has far-reaching implications for the jurisprudence of this state.”
Now I don’t know if that is accurate (again IANAL) but I find this concerning. Given how political the courts are these days it is hard for me to judge what is “radically destabilizing” and what is just someone blowing of steam when they have no power to do anything. Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls is one of two Democrats on the Supreme Court.
Especially because WRAL referred back to some of it’s previous reporting of a leaked document (more supreme court leakage, but at the state level???). One of the proposed changes was in the leaked document
One of the policies would give the Supreme Court the ability the decide that certain opinions issued by the state Court of Appeals shouldn’t be used as precedent, according to notes from a North Carolina Bar Association Meeting last month. The notes were taken by a meeting attendee and obtained by WRAL News. The substance of the notes were confirmed by people familiar with the proposals.
The other change, as detailed in the notes, would give the Supreme Court more power over which cases from the Court of Appeals are allowed to make their way to the Supreme Court. The seven-justice court has five Republicans and is led by Chief Justice Paul Newby.
WRAL reports that the Supreme Court (which recently switched to majority Republican after several years of being majority Democratic) has been (what sounds like) re-hearing cases the previous Court ruled on so they can reverse the rulings?
Anyway the conclusion about what this “we can unpublish whatever we want whenever we want” thing
The power to unpublish Court of Appeals opinions would give the Supreme Court majority an incredible amount of authority to shape the state’s legal precedent on all imaginable issues, from election law and political cases to contract law, tax law, criminal law and more.
The Court of Appeals hears so many cases every year that it would be impossible for the Supreme Court to review all of them, even if the justices wanted to. So unpublishing opinions from the Court of Appeals would let the Supreme Court influence precedent, without actually hearing the case.
So, how concerning is this? Are they just adjusting powers to things that are commonly done in other states?
