Miscellaneous

The Honorable Paul Pfeifer, Ohio's Most Conservative Justice

By The Pullins Group LLC

There has long been a misconception in Ohio political and legal circles, namely that Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer is a liberal jurist, who consistently sides with personal injury trial lawyers and government employee unions.  And as the longtime leader of the Ohio Taxpayers Association, a fiscally conservative organization, I too had joined in that misconception.

But a funny thing happened to me on the way to becoming a lawyer, I actually started to read and study his opinions, especially his brilliant dissents.  Those dissents show a constitutional scholar who stands front and center for a supreme court that is a separate and equal branch of government.  Above all three branches are the people as embodied in the state constitution.

Justice Pfeifer believes that the Ohio Supreme Court makeup of today defers too much to the judgment of the legislative branch of government.  That opinion is transparently clear in his recent dissent in the CAT Tax case where he calls for the abolition of the court's traditional presumption of the constitutionality of legislative enactments.

Justice Pfeifer makes good points in this dissent that are must reading for those who consider themselves constitutional scholars.  Statutes are not on equal footing with the constitution, he writes.  The constitution is superior to statutes and when they conflict, the constitution should always prevail.  This is because the constitution was enacted by the people and can only be amended by the people, and our government is derived from the people.

Call me a liberal trial lawyer or a fool, but those writings sound pretty darn conservative to me.  Thank you.

Full post as published by The Pullins Report on September 18, 2009 (boomark / email).