Supreme Court of Mississippi

“ That the State never had before, and has never had since, a finer Judiciary than that which was organized under the administration of Governor Alcorn and which continued under the administration of Governor Ames is an indisputable and incontrovertible fact. The Judges of the Supreme Court were E.G. Peyton, H.F. Simrall and J. Tarbell, who in Mississippi had no superiors in their profession, and who had the respect and confidence of the bar and of the people without regard to race or politics. ”

“ I agree with the Court that the viability line established by Roe and Casey should be discarded under a straightforward stare decisis analysis. That line never made any sense. Our abortion precedents describe the right at issue as a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. That right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further—certainly not all the way to viability. Mississippi’s law allows a woman three months to obtain an abortion, well beyond the point at which it is considered “late” to discover a pregnancy. ”

“ For these reasons, we hold that the waters of the Middle Claiborne Aquifer are subject to the judicial remedy of equitable apportionment.
B
Mississippi contends that it has sovereign ownership of all groundwater beneath its surface, so equitable apportionment ought not apply. We see things differently. It is certainly true that “each State has full jurisdiction over the lands within its borders, including the beds of streams and other waters.” ”

“ In any case where bail is denied before conviction, the judge shall place in the record his reasons for denying bail. Any person who is charged with an offense punishable by imprisonment for a maximum of twenty (20) years or more or by life imprisonment and who is denied bail prior to conviction shall be entitled to an emergency hearing before a justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court. ”

“ Roe, 410 U. S., at 150; cf. Glucksberg, 521 U. S., at 728–731 (identifying similar interests) .
B
These legitimate interests justify Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act. Except “in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality,” the statute prohibits abortion “if the probable gestational age of the unborn human being has been determined to be greater than fifteen (15) weeks.” Miss. Code Ann. §41–41–191 (4) (b) . The Mississippi Legislature’s findings recount the stages of “human prenatal development” and assert the State’s interest in “protecting the life of the unborn.” ”

“ Although we hold that the Federal Constitution does not prevent a state appellate court from upholding a death sentence that is based in part on an invalid or improperly defined aggravating circumstance either by reweighing of the aggravating and mitigating evidence or by harmless-error review, we vacate the judgment below and remand, because it is unclear whether the Mississippi Supreme Court correctly employed either of these methods. ”

“ Although our past cases have generally concerned streams and rivers, we see no basis for a different result in the context of the Middle Claiborne Aquifer. When a water resource is shared between several States, each one “has an interest which should be respected by the other.” Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S., at 466. Mississippi’s ownership approach would allow an upstream State to completely cut off flow to a downstream one, a result contrary to our equitable apportionment jurisprudence. ”

“ This question is left to "the resident freeholders and leaseholders for a term of three years or more" of the territory so voting. It will be noticed that neither sex nor age is mentioned, and in truth women and infants do actually vote in the state, on this interesting and to those involved, most serious question.
The Supreme Court of the state has settled beyond cavil that the statute is constitutional and valid. This "fence" or "no fence" election is possibly an exception to the general rule of the state that a plurality vote elects or carries. ”

“ In the last election in November 2020, women, who make up around 51.5 percent of the population of Mississippi, [67] constituted 55.5 percent of the voters who cast ballots. [68]
3
Unable to show concrete reliance on Roe and Casey themselves, the Solicitor General suggests that overruling those decisions would “threaten the Court’s precedents holding that the Due Process Clause protects other rights.” Brief for United States 26 (citing Obergefell, 576 U. S. 644; Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558; Griswold, 381 U. S. 479) . That is not correct for reasons we have already discussed. ”

“ Hence, appropriate corrective action as a matter of state law might have included granting petitioner's motion. We have not overlooked the fact that the first opinion remanded for a new trial, although the usual practice of the Mississippi Supreme Court where a motion for directed verdict, renewed at the close of all the evidence, is improperly denied is to dismiss the prosecution. ”

“ The Middle Claiborne Aquifer’s “multistate character” seems beyond dispute. See Sporhase v. Nebraska ex rel. Douglas, 458 U. S. 941, 953 (1982) . Mississippi concedes that the “geologic formation in which the groundwater is stored straddles two states.” Complaint ¶41. Indeed, a core premise of Mississippi’s suit is that Tennessee is pumping water that was once in Mississippi. The evidence shows that wells in Memphis and wells in northwest Mississippi are “pumping from the same aquifer.” Hearing Tr. ”

“ In light of this history, it seems rather surprising that the District Court entertained seriously the argument that the United States could not constitutionally sue a State. The reading of the Constitution urged by Mississippi is not supported by precedent, is not required by any language of the Constitution, and would without justification in reason diminish the power of courts to protect the people of this country against deprivation and destruction by States of their federally guaranteed rights. ”

“ No court would give judgment for a plaintiff unless it believed that the facts were a cause of action by the law determining their effect. Mistakes will be rare. In this case the Missouri court no doubt supposed that the award was binding by the law of Mississippi. If it was mistaken, it made a natural mistake. The validity of its judgment, even in Mississippi, is, as we believe, the result of the Constitution as it always has been understood, and is not a matter to arouse the susceptibiliities of the states, all of which are equally concerned in the question and equally on both sides. ”

“ This being our view of the power of the legislature, we do not enter upon a consideration of the elements of complainant's contention. It is very trite to say that the right to pursue happiness and exercise rights and liberty are subject in some degree to the limitations of the law, and the condition upon which the state of Mississippi offers the complainant free instruction in its University, that while a student there he renounce affiliation with a society which the state considers inimical to discipline, finds no prohibition in the 14th Amendment. ”

“ To hold that persons not interested in that contract, nor parties to the suit, can now come in and treat the judgment as absolutely void, on its face, is such a departure from all the principles on which the jurisdiction of the court is determined, that even the authority of the courts of Mississippi should not, in my opinion, control us in the matter. ”