Capitol Notes

Capitol Notes | Peggy Sue, the Beagle Hound

Every dog has his day.

Extraordinary Sessions Galore!

October is one of our favorite months. The weather is cooler with warm days and pleasant nights; our humans enjoy the confluence of football and baseball seasons as well as hockey and basketball. We don’t usually expect much legislative activity other than shameless fundraising. This October, however, saw not one, but two, extraordinary legislative sessions with one being called by Governor Bill Lee and the second being convened by our legislative friends. Governor Lee’s efforts brought the General Assembly back to our Capitol to approve the incentive package and the governance structure for the Memphis Regional Megasite. The site named Blue Oval City, think Ford logo, will include the motor vehicle assembly plant, a battery plant, and some related supplier facilities. The estimated project cost is $5.6 billion, and the estimation of new jobs is 5,700. Construction is slated to begin this December with 2025 as the completion date. This project will bring generational change to Haywood and Fayette counties and our entire state. The first extraordinary session convened on Monday, October 18, and easily finished in three days with many congratulatory handshakes and belly rubs all around. With the second extraordinary session, for only the third time in our state’s history, a two thirds majority of each house of the General Assembly signed a petition convening the General Assembly. They gathered on Wednesday, October 27. Over 80 bills were filed in each house, but seven bills and a resolution sponsored by the two speakers had the inside track to passage and did indeed pass. Our legislative friends continue to be irritated that they cannot legislate the virus away, but that simple fact did not keep them from trying. The omnibus bill, SB 9014 by Jack Johnson / HB 9077 by Jason Zachary which became Chapter 6 of the Third Extraordinary Session of the 112th General Assembly is linked here: Tennessee General Assembly Legislation. House Speaker Cameron Sexton was the bulldog with the collar on, and his leadership set the start date and the duration of the session. The business community has howled about the new statute, and even more so about the process used during the extraordinary session which ended way past our bedtime in the early morning hours of Saturday, October 30. That process was skinny on transparency as well as any opportunity to present testimony. It remains to be seen if that legislative work product will be revisited in the 2022 regular legislative session.

Judicial Elections. The first day a candidate may pick up a qualifying petition from the election commission office for the May 3, 2022, primary is Monday, December 20, 2021. The next campaign financial disclosure report is due January 31, 2022, and the qualifying deadline is noon on Thursday, February 17, 2022.

Rule of Law. This year’s Law Day Theme is “Advancing the Rule of Law Now” and the NBA celebrated the theme well with this year’s October luncheon event. In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton noted that the Judicial branch of the proposed government would be the weakest of the three branches because it had “no influence over either the sword or the purse, ...It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” Hamilton remembered his classical education well and the observation of Aristotle that “The law is reason free from passion…Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.” Our legislative friends recognize these two thoughts in the abstract, but anger with a single decision may lead to a lack of respect for judges personally and the process generally, and we all suffer for that. We don’t even agree with our humans filling the food bowl all of the time, but we always respect them and the process.

Calendar Checklist.

Keep your mistletoe and poinsettias away from the dog food bowl. Even if not fatal, the result may well be a present you do not want to see under your tree.

Send a holiday card to your favorite legislative contacts, be they elected officials or staff members. Each will appreciate the thought, and it’s a nice way to stay in contact with a gentle touch.

NBA offices will be closed on Friday, December 24, and Monday, December 27, for the Christmas holidays and Friday, December 31, and Monday, January 3, for the New Year’s Day holiday.

The General Assembly will convene in regular session at noon on Tuesday, January 11, 2022. n

PEGGY SUE is fond of the classic 1957 Buddy Holly song. When hunting legislative news or biscuits, she is hard to contact.

The Great Dissenter is a superb biography of a Supreme Court Justice who understood the founder’s concept of an independent judiciary and acted on his duty as the “final expositor of the fundamental law of the land”—the Constitution when explaining how the legislative enactments authorizing discrimination on the basis of race violated the “people’s laws” as stated in the Bill of Rights. Justice Harlan understood his duty and performed his job. It just took the rest of us too long to acknowledge that he was right. Simply put, our job now is to ensure that the Judiciary is not prevented from fulfilling the purpose for which it was created.

Our history reveals the intention of the founders to establish the judicial branch as an equal and independent branch of our American Government and the reason they thought that necessary. I believe that the judiciary and our justice system can and must fulfill the role assigned to them at our founding because the continuing independence of the judicial branch is necessary to our democracy. I also think that we would do well to take a hard look at the current attacks on our legal/judicial system and come to its defense, individually and collectively.

The Nashville Bar Association is a good place to begin. This room is full of people who serve our legal/judicial system in different ways—as many ways as there are interests among our members. Just like America, the NBA is diverse and has the capacity to touch many different people and communities with the message that our legal/judicial system matters to our democracy.

We live in times that cry out for calm voices to publicly speak FOR the value and the necessity of an independent judicial branch that, in the tripartite Government established in the Constitution, is co-equal with the Legislative and Executive branches It is also a time in which calm voices need to speak AGAINST the actions and attitudes that threaten the legal system and our democracy:

The politics of division.

The calls to attack judges professionally and personally.

The encouragement to defy or just ignore judicial opinions.

The attitude that deems the work of attorneys a joke.

If you don’t defend your profession, who will?

I suggest that you begin by simply talking to people about the benefits of our legal system, particularly as compared to other legal systems. Just think of your efforts to protect and defend the practice of law and the independence of the Judicial Branch of our government as a salute to the American system of justice

Each of you here today is part of the legal/judicial system envisioned by our founders. It has stood the test of time but these days that system is in need of some support. It would certainly benefit from yours. Thank you. n

Endnotes

1 Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, in The Federalist Papers 2 Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905) at 69–73. 3 Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) at 24–25. 4 Id. at 38. 5 Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) at 48. 6 Id. at 61. 7 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) at 543, 550–51. 8 Id. at 559. 9 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) at 495.

HON. JANE STRANCH is a federal judge with the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. She joined the court in 2010 after a nomination from President Barack Obama.

VOLUNTEER FOR DIAL-A-LAWYER

Dial-A-Lawyer is held the first Tuesday of each month from 6:00 – 8:00pm, and the public is invited to call in with basic legal questions. If you would like to volunteer and help the NBA support this program, please contact Traci.Hollandsworth@nashvillebar.org. Pro Bono credit applies, and a complimentary dinner is provided.

Thank you to our April/May volunteers! GINA CRAWLEY CHRIS HUGAN TOM LAWLESS JOE RUSNAK

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Trey Harwell Lisa Helton John Holt Lloyd Houk Paul Housch Joseph Hubbard R. Jan Jennings Andrew Kaufman Jordan Keller Christopher Kelly John Kitch William Koch Irwin Kuhn Edward Lanquist Thomas Lawless Wendy Longmire Christina Lopez Randal Mashburn Sam McAllester Amanda McClendon Carol McCoy Nicholas McGregor Bob Mendes Margaret Moore Patricia Moskal Phillip Newman Elizabeth Ozment Mattison Painter Kyle Parks David Parsons Gregory Pease Andrea Perry Tracy Powell

George Preston David Raybin Sara Reynolds Nathan Ridley Christopher Sabis Carolyn Schott Joseph Shelton Kimberly Silvus Martin Sir Elizabeth Sitgreaves Ronald Small Eric Smith Laura Smith Saul Solomon Kimbra Spann John Spragens Joycelyn Stevenson Michael Stewart Gerard Stranch James Stranch Aleta Trauger Howard Vogel Michael Wall Elizabeth Washko Jim Weatherly Thomas White Thomas Wiseman Talley Wood Edward Yarbrough Bill Young Stephen Young Gulam Zade

Stephen Zralek