The supreme confidence to say "no" to government

Two challengers, State Sen. Stephen Johnson, R-Kent, and Bellevue attorney John Groen, have announced for the Washington Supreme Court. Johnson is challenging Justice Susan Owens and Groen is challenging Chief Justice Gerry Alexander. The challengers distinguish themselves by saying what they think, which candidates for the high court generally do not do, and by having an identifiable point of view.

They are conservatives who, in Johnson's words, say the court should follow "the plain words and meaning of the state constitution" and of law.

Johnson, 67, also an attorney, is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Groen, 46, typically represents citizens against the government, often over land issues.

Groen defines himself by objecting on four recent rulings. Johnson objected to two of them at his campaign breakfast, and generally sides with Groen on the others. They are:

• The sinking-ship garage. The Seattle Monorail Authority condemned a parking garage near the Smith Tower. One-third of it was for a monorail station. The Authority wanted to be able to pile stuff on the other two-thirds of the property during construction and offer it later to private developers. Our state constitution forbids the taking of property for "private use," but the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that condemning land for later resale was OK.

After voters killed the monorail project, the owners, John and Doris Fujii, got their property back — though by the court's thinking they had no right to it. Says Johnson, "People are worried about what the state of the law is regarding their property."

• Hangartner. Rick Hangartner of Seattle lent his surname to this case when he requested a mess of monorail project documents. The Monorail Authority said he had asked for too many, and gave him none. He sued. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Monorail Authority could do that, though there was no such provision in the Public Disclosure Act. Johnson and Groen say the justices were acting as legislators.

• The emergency clause. In 2005, a majority in the Legislature wanted to raise taxes on cigarettes and liquor but didn't have the two-thirds required by Initiative 601. Legislators amended the tax-limit law by a majority vote and raised the taxes. To short-circuit the right of the people to call an immediate referendum on that, legislators declared a public emergency.

Over the years, they have declared hundreds of emergencies, stripping the right of referendum granted to the people in the state constitution. The Washington State Farm Bureau Federation, represented by Groen's firm, challenged the declaration of emergency in court, and lost.

• Felony-murder. Washington law said for many years that when a person commits assault and somebody dies as a result, it's second-degree murder. In 2004, the Supreme Court said the Legislature hadn't meant that, and threw it out. The Legislature put it back in, but in the meantime nearly 300 killers were eligible to sue to have their second-degree convictions overturned. One who did was the youth who beat to death Kristopher Kime during Mardi Gras in 2001.

The Supreme Court challengers say their opponents were wrong on most of these cases. An exception was felony-murder, in which Justice Owens voted their way.

Four cases: one is about property rights and another about crime, both traditional conservative issues; the other two are about citizens' control of government. That used to be a progressive cause in the time before the progressives went to work for the state.

More and more, outside the arousal issues of religion, sex and personal privacy, mainline liberals have become the Government Party, whose request of the judiciary is to let the government alone.

Here are a couple of candidates who sound as if they might occasionally say "no."

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com