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Court lays groundwork for one day ending concept of sovereign immunity

In a ruling today on a land dispute in Templeton, the Supreme Judicial Court came close to overturning the idea that you can't sue the state without its permission, but pulled back because the justices figured it would be better for the legislature to hash it out.

The justices were asked to resolve a dispute between a non-profit coporation that ran a farm for the mentally disabled on land in Templeton and the state, which designated the land for recreational and conservation use; the court ruled the corporation still owned the land.

The state's highest court rejected the state's argument that sovereign immunity applied in the case, because the case involved only a dispute over ownership of the land, not over any policy decisions by state employees or elected officials and because "the adjudication of a plaintiff's ownership of specified parcels of recorded land would not subject the public fisc to a 'specter of virtually unlimited liability.'"

But the court also expressed its discomfort with the broader legal concept of sovereign immunity, which dates to the days of absolute monarchs in England and the idea that kings could do no wrong, and so could not be sued.

Scholars have for many years "suggested that the doctrine is an anachronism in American law," given our nation's rejection of the monarchy. ... Our own view has been that "there should be limits to governmental liability and exceptions to the rule of liability." Morash & Sons, 363 Mass. at 623. Yet we also have recognized that an overly comprehensive rule of sovereign immunity is "unjust and indefensible as a matter of logic and sound public policy."

The court held that the very idea of sovereign immunity is really a judicial construct and that while it could just toss the whole thing, it would prefer to let the elected legislature consider it - as in 1977, when, after the court signaled its intent to toss sovereign immunity in cases of personal injuries caused by state employees, the legislature enacted a tort-reform law that let people sue the state for injuries without asking the state for permission.

[I]n drawing the boundaries of that doctrine (in the Templeton case], we recognize that it strains against constitutionally protected values. Article 1 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights protects "the right of . . . acquiring, possessing and protecting property." The Declaration of Rights provides also that the "officers of government . . . are at all times accountable to [the people]," art. 5, and that "[e]very subject of the commonwealth ought to find a certain remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries or wrongs which he may receive in his person, property, or character," art. 11. Sovereign immunity diminishes the degree to which our laws protect property rights, provide recourse to legal proceedings, and hold government officers accountable to the people. ...

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If you want to pique more interest in the issue and associated history, note how the Fernald School was a better name than the original "Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Youth!"

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