The case itself raised an issue of the admissibility of evidence at a criminal trial, which the court found denied the defendant a fair trial due to later scientific developments. The issue raises some interesting questions of the standard that applies to such challenges. (While unanimously vacating the conviction, the court actually divided 3-2 over the standard).
The majority ruled that the false-evidence standard applied under the state constitution when prosecutors knowingly present untrue testimony, holding that all that is required is that there is a “reasonable possibility” that the challenged evidence influenced the vote of any juror.
Reasonable minds can disagree on that standard, but the opinion suddenly veers off into a completely gratuitous and irrelevant attack on the integrity of the United States Supreme Court.
Equally troubling is that legal pundits like Mark Stern (who covers the Supreme Court for Slate) have heralded Eddins as “the one judge who has the guts” to denounce the Court.
Eddins writes a chest-thumping diatribe about how his court “takes no instruction” from the “hubristic originalists” on the Supreme Court. Of course, it has been 210 years since Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816) held that the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction over state court rulings. It has been roughly 170 years since the Court ruled in Ableman v. Booth (1858) that state courts cannot overrule or obstruct judgments of the federal courts.
Justice Eddins and his colleagues are not declaring a judicial insurrection but rather a form of passive aggression, a pledge to minimize any orders from a Court described as “driven by agenda and intent on swiping power that belongs to the people.”
He was asserting the separate authority under the state constitution to render opposing opinions, presumably when those decisions do not contravene federal rights. Eddins asserted that the majority of justices “systematically dismantles democratic safeguards, steamrolls constitutional liberties, and tramples human dignity.” He proclaimed that their attack on democracy itself “does not chart the course for the Hawaiʻi Constitution.”
Unlike the Supreme Court, Eddins declares that his court will “follow principles, not agendas” and take “no guidance” from “the Supreme Court’s imperious ideology.” He included broadsides against the Supreme Court barring racial gerrymandering and other forms of racial discrimination, including a disgraceful claim that “The Roberts Court sees only white.”
In rejecting what he claims as his colleagues seeking to apply a standard imported from the demonized Supreme Court, Eddins dramatically declared that this court “needs no part of this. The Hawaiʻi Constitution was built to stand on its own. And so it does.”
It was the most substantive declaration since Sen Cory Booker’s “I am Spartacus” moment. The Hawaii Supreme Court will not truly stand on its own. It is part of a constitutional system that requires adherence to binding precedent, even rulings that Eddins finds obnoxious. Obviously, the state can impose its own constitutional values so long as it does not contravene federal rights and jurisdiction, which are quite broad. The rest comes off as using a judicial opinion to virtue signal.
For some of us who value federalism, there is no question that state courts have the authority to protect state constitutional values that do not violate the federal Constitution. Ironically, it is the conservative majority that is most likely to defend that state authority. However, Eddins could have made that point without the vituperative and injudicious attack on his federal counterparts who hold different jurisprudential views.
Notably, Eddins cited Justice Jackson as the model of true fealty to the law. He is not the first state supreme court justice to do so, as discussed earlier in a case from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Since her confirmation in 2022, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has established a legacy that is fast becoming one of the most radical in the Court’s history. Her sole dissents have drawn sharp criticism from conservative and liberal colleagues.
These federal and state Supreme Court opinions are a glimpse into what awaits the country if Democratic leaders carry out their threat to take over the Supreme Court by adding four liberal justices in the image of Justice Jackson.
Nevertheless, pundits like Stern are lionizing Eddins for his pledge to use his court to resist: “When state judges refuse to carry that project any further than federal law requires, the machinery of judicial supremacy begins to jam. Eddins has shown his colleagues exactly where to stick the wrench.”
Nothing says judicial restraint like a good wrench throwing.
It is not even the Calvinball jurisprudence of Justice Jackson. Justice Eddins reduces our judiciary to the level of Rip Torn’s Dodgeball:
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”