Paul Mirski's October 2012 CACR 26/Question 2 Forum

additional commentary by Rep. Timothy Horrigan; October 26, 2012

Extra! [November 21, 2012] Question 2 lost in the 2012 General Election, which was no huge surprise.  It needed 2/3 of the popular vote to be added to the Constitution, and it got 49%.  I was surprised that all four of the representatives in the videos below did badly, as did the host (and videographer), Kevin Avard.  Only Dan Itse won re-election, and he was a popular longtime incumbent who won by just 237 votes against a relatively unknown Democrat in a town so Republican, it was named after the founder of the Republican party.  (Fremont was named after Gen. John Charles Frémont.)  The leader of the panel, Paul Mirski, managed to lose a district he drew himself (since he was chair of the House redistricting committee) by a margin of almost 2-1.  (Rep. Mirski could have drawn himself a much more favorable district, though I am sure he would have lost anyway.  He is an ultraconservative who lives in Enfield, population 4,582,  a former mill town near Hanover whose old Yankee, Eastern European and French-Canadian families are gradually making way for more cosmopolitan and more liberal Dartmouth College types. He ran just from the Town of Enfield.  He could easily have added two or more smaller and much more conservative towns to his district, including the "Free Staters' Vatican," the Town of Grafton.  But I digress...)

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I am not exactly sure why I feel like putting up these videos, since I am against Question 2, better known to members of the 2011-2012 New Hampshire General Court as "CACR 26." This proposed constitutional amendment would create massive confusion and would compromise the independence of the state judiciary. The second problem is in fact the main point of the proposal. There are many New Hampshire Republicans who want to go back to the way things (supposedly) were for a relatively brief period between 1775 and 1804, when there was no independent judiciary. The panel discussion hosted by Paul Mirski does shed some light on the origins of the House Petitions and Redress of Grievances Committee.

Paul Ingbretson was the chair of the Redress Committee in 2011 and 2012. Dan Itse and Greg Sorg were not official members of the committee but they sat in on many meetings. The committee was in large part Paul Mirski's idea, although my recollection is that he never actually attended any meetings. (I would be careful about believing anything Mirski says, by the way, even though he speaks with a voice of deep authority.)

The committee heard a lot of talk in 2012 (though not so much in 2011) about how we couldn't retry individual cases.  However, the  landmark 1818-1819 legal case "Merrill vs. Sherburne" which is decried throughout this presentation as the worst mistake in the history of New Hampshire jurisprudence was about the issue of whether or not the legislature can force the courts to retry a specific case.

The emcee for this event, which was held on or before October 24, 2012 at Thomas More College in Merrimack, NH, was Rep. Kevin Avard.


  1. Rep. Paul Mirski
    *

    Original URL: http://youtu.be/KPF0ExQVuYM

  2. Rep. Dan Itse

    Original URL: http://youtu.be/w_YLKZjeYXk

  3. Rep. Greg Sorg

    Original URL: http://youtu.be/mg_RR_BDRsc

  4. Rep. Paul Ingbretson


    Original URL: http://youtu.be/wvwrKifDUhk

  5. Question & Answer Period (mostly answers)

    Original URL: http://youtu.be/KHNcRlznTRs



The proposed amendment reads as follows. The bold italic text is material being added to Part Second Article 73-a of the state constitution. This version of the amendment was a compromise drafted by the Senate: Rep. Mirski and his cosponsors originally wanted to eliminate "73-a" altogether.

[Art.] 73-a. [Supreme Court, Administration.] The chief justice of the supreme court shall be the administrative head of all the courts. [He] The chief justice shall, with the concurrence of a majority of the supreme court justices, make rules governing the administration of all courts in the state and the practice and procedure to be followed in all such courts. The rules so promulgated shall have the force and effect of law. The legislature shall have a concurrent power to regulate the same matters by statute. In the event of a conflict between a statute and a court rule, the statute, if not otherwise contrary to this constitution, shall prevail over the rule.


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