Posts Tagged: courts
Micheli Files
In California, as in most states, a statute is presumed to operate prospectively. Quarry v. Doe I (2012) 53 Cal.4th 945, 955. In construing statutes, there is a presumption against retroactive application unless the Legislature plainly has directed otherwise by means of express language of retroactivity or other sources that provide a clear and unavoidable implication that the Legislature intended retroactive application of the statute.
Micheli Files
MICHELI FILES: Despite no constitutional provision allowing them (or prohibiting them), many California Governors have used “signing messages” to accompany a Governor’s signature on a bill. U.S. Presidents also have long used signing messages.
Micheli Files
MICHELI FILES: It is not the role of the legislative or executive branches of government to determine a statute’s constitutionality. Rather, that role is reserved to the third branch of government – the judicial branch.
Opinion
OPINION – The exclusive right to operate bank card games is constitutionally guaranteed to tribal nations as a path to re-establish our sovereignty and rebuild many of our tribal nations which were torn down by years of oppression and injustice. It is a right we take seriously, and a right we depend on to support our people.
Analysis
ANALYSIS – According to the courts, the purpose of the constitutional reenactment rule, which prohibits amending a section of statute unless the section is reenacted as amended, is “to avoid enactment of statutes in terms so blind that legislators themselves are deceived in regard to their effect.”
Analysis
ANALYSIS – Around the country, and at the federal level, there is an ongoing debate among legislative lawyers whether a severability clause must be included in legislation.
Analysis
One method to help ascertain the legislative intent behind a specified measure is a letter that is published in the Assembly Daily Journal or the Senate Daily Journal by the bill’s author. These letters, for which there are many each year, may be used by the bill’s author to explain an ambiguity in the bill or explain the purpose of particular changes in the law as done by the bill.
News
The law that offers wildfire-fighting inmates a chance to clean up their records in hopes of civilian careers got off to a slow start last year as administrators crafted rules for the procedure, but now, with those rules in place, the prison-to-profession pipeline is starting to take shape.
Opinion
OPINION: Record-setting wildfires, fueled by the climate crisis and uncontrolled sprawl, are burning at all times of the year. Yet local officials continue to greenlight hillside projects as if these land-use decisions aren’t linked to the never-ending fire season.
News
ANALYSIS: One of the long-running points of contention when California courts examine what’s known as “legislative intent” is the judiciary’s general disdain for statements made by the authors of legislation. Those clear-language statements accompanying bills, common in the Capitol, seek to offer guidance and state the purpose and intention of an author’s legislation.
California law, image by Vitalii Vodolazskyi
