In re Opinion of the Justices
| Decision Date | 06 May 1935 |
| Citation | 179 A. 344 |
| Parties | In re OPINION OF THE JUSTICES. |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
In the matter of the opinion of the Justices of the Supreme Court on a question submitted by resolution of the State Senate.
Question answered.
Robert J. Peaslee, of Manchester, for the bill.
Louis E. Wyman, of Manchester, opposed.
At the present session of the Legislature, the following resolution adopted by the Senate was transmitted to the justices of the Supreme Court on March 20, 1935:
The following answer was returned: To the Honorable Senate:
The undersigned, the justices of the Supreme Court, answer your inquiry relative to Senate Bill No. 37 as follows:
The commission proposed by the bill is intended to be an executive tribunal, and not a court within the judiciary department of the state government. The bill proposes to confer upon the commission power to adjudicate certain disputes of a legal character between individuals. A question arises whether such power may be thus vested constitutionally.
Article 37 of the Bill of Rights in the state Constitution declares that the powers of the three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, "ought to be kept as separate from, and independent of, each other, as the nature of free government will admit, or as is consistent with" the unity of the whole.
The reasons for this separation of governmental departments do not here need discussion beyond saying that when the Constitution was founded they were urgent and insistent. Historical antecedence and political philosophy made the demand for them imperative. No change in this fundamental principle has taken place. Opinion of the Justices, 85 N. H. 562, 569, 154 A. 217.
It is consistent with the Constitution that executive officers should be vested with some judicial power. It is not only convenient but necessary that it be given, in order that government may function. But it must be power needed to enable them to perform their executive duties. It may not be given them merely because it is thought that efficiency and convenience in the administration of a statute will be promoted thereby. "The government has no need of action in violation of the Constitution." Goodrich Falls Electric Co. v. Howard, 86 N. H. 512, 521, 171 A. 761, 766.
In the connection between the departments some overlapping is permissible, and there is a region of authority, alternative and concurrent, the boundaries of which are fixed by no final rule. As a rule which meets most situations, when an executive board has regulatory functions, it may hear and determine controversies which are incidental thereto, but if the duty is primarily to decide questions of legal right between private parties, the function belongs to the judiciary. Courts of justice, in their popular sense, may not be set up and established in the executive organization. They pertain exclusively to the branch of the judiciary.
Under this rule the grant or reservation of judicial review of the decisions of an administrative board does not change the character of the decisions. If they are of judicial nature, because performed in the exercise of the strict judicial function, an undertaking to give authority to the courts to review them and to correct the board's errors of law does not validate the board's authority. An administrative board may proclaim only administrative judgments. If they may be judicially reviewed, the right to have them reviewed does not transform them into judicial judgments, although the review and action therein is judicial. But a valid administrative judgment has the same force of obligation and finality as a judicial one. The view sometimes adopted that the right of appeal to the courts, either in wide or limited measure, saves action of an executive board from a valid charge of judicial invasion is not considered to be sound in principle. Authority to correct its errors does not alter the character of its undertaking. "The nature of the final act determines the nature of the previous inquiry." Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U. S. 210, 227, 29 S. Ct. 67, 70, 53 L. Ed. 150.
The question how far there may be administrative finality may invoke constitutional issues, but not on the assignment of governmental powers.
The creation of an executive board is justified if its service is to determine and maintain a public right or...
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Attorney General v. Johnson
...disputes between employment agency and applicants, with right to trial de novo in superior court). But see In re Opinion of the Justices, 87 N.H. 492, 179 A. 344, 357 (1935). Often cases involving the constitutionality of arbitration statutes do not even mention the question of separation o......
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McHugh v. Santa Monica Rent Control Bd.
...to come under the protection of a public interest and to have it upheld and maintained for his benefit." (In re Opinion of the Justices (1935) 87 N.H. 492, 179 A. 344, 345-347.) With these two principles in mind, we review the decisions of our sister states. At least nine states, all of whi......
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State ex rel. Hovey Concrete Products Co. v. Mechem
...of the proceedings. * * *' The principle there announced is sound today and should be reaffirmed. See also In re Opinion of Justices, 87 N.H. 492, 179 A. 344, 110 A.L.R. 819. Relators cite many cases in which the courts have sustained statutes creating Workmen's Compensation Commissions. Un......
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Marathon Pipeline Co. v. Northern Pipeline Construction Co., Civ. No. 4-80-589.
...litigants, since he may not be constitutionally authorized to take jurisdiction in respect to them." Opinion of the Justices. 87 N.H. 492, 495, 179 A. 344 (1935). 13 In Glidden v. Zdanok, 370 U.S. 530, 82 S.Ct. 1459, 8 L.Ed.2d 671 (1962), the Supreme court held that Congress could not autho......