Mississippi - State Supreme Court vote bans one of its own from dissent

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal ^ | August 22, 2008 | Patsy R. Brumfeld

[HAL9000]

Excerpt -

JACKSON – Something unusual happened Thursday at the Mississippi Supreme Court.

It may be the first time a majority of the justices voted to prohibit a colleague from publishing a dissent in a case.

In other words, Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Ocean Springs disagreed with a court decision and wanted to write about it. His fellow judges said, no, he couldn’t and they apparently stopped the court clerk from filing Diaz’s statement into the record.

Diaz's document also wasn’t made available to the public, as every other order and dissent are.

~ snip ~

[the anti-liberal]

Coming soon to a Supreme Court near you?

[Owl_Eagle]

Coming soon to a Supreme Court near you?

If THE MESSIAH gets to pick a few SCOTUS slots, you can bank on it.

[timm22]

That's odd. According to the article, the dissent is based on a differing interpretation of the beginning of the statute of limitations for a wrongful death claim. Doesn't really seem all that controversial or dangerous.

Any Mississippi Freepers who can shed some light on this?

[Havok]

I don’t care if the dissenting justice was a liberal, this cant be allowed to happen.

[Tzimisce]

Well the first Amendment does say “The Congress” and not “The Court”.

So you’ll take this ruling and like it. :)

-your friends on the American left

[cotton1706]

Well this is pretty stupid. No matter what side of the issue he’s on, the majority does not have the authority to prevent a differing opinion. He should release it to the press, publish it himself, send it by email to every lawyer and paralegal in the state, etc. right in the teeth of their prohibition. We don’t need to put up with this crap from our “robed masters” (Scalia’s term).

[HAL9000]

UPDATE: State Supreme Court releases previously banned dissent

[AnAmericanMother]

Something more here than meets the eye.

All high courts have liberals and conservatives, who disagree with each other. Every judge still gets to publish an opinion if he wants (that's why you sometimes wind up with a splintered decision with 3, 4 or even more opinions).

I've been a lawyer for almost 30 years, I'm the daughter and great-granddaughter of lawyers, and I've NEVER heard of anything like this before!

My money's on some kind of feud between this judge and the others, possibly over something as silly as officer refurbishing or a parking space. Wait and see.

[Mr. Lucky]

The newspaper article mentions that the plaintiff in the case was an employee of the court. If this case involved, say, a clerk of Justice Diaz and he refused to recuse himself, the action of the other justices wasn't quite so malevolent.

[vetvetdoug]

One may need to see what Diaz has been up to lately. Diaz was one of the Judges that was tied up with the Dickie Scruggs case and was reprimanded for criminal activity.