Audrey Matura Shepherd on the kinks of the 9th Amendment

Audrey Matura-Shepherd

If the bill is passed into law, it would bar all legal challenges to future constitutional amendments. If you’re still unsure of what it all means, Attorney Audrey Matura-Shepherd broke down the legal jargon into a digestible and understandable format on this morning’s Open Your Eyes.

Audrey Matura-Shepherd, Attorney

“What is being proposed now is to include a subsection nine and subsection nine is where, simply read, creates the problem. It says “for the removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that the provisions of this are all inclusive and exhaustive”—and that means that we want to know that this is it—“and there are no other limitations whether substantive or procedural”. You see before, you could have gone through all the motions and followed all the proper procedures and an attorney would not be challenging the procedure, but you would be challenging the substantive nature of it. And I think the case with Barry Bowen and the Landowners Association is a good example of it. Procedurally, they had the majority; they did all the right things procedurally. But substantively, we were saying this is unconstitutional and that case was proven to be right. By removing this now, by saying that you can’t challenge substantively or put any limitations on procedure; what you’re doing now is tying down the issue to make sure that there is no challenge. But that still to me is not the most offensive part. It goes on to say—so they don’t want you to limit the power of the National Assembly to alter the constitution—and it says: “a law passed by the National Assembly to alter any provisions” and that is most important part “ANY provisions of this constitution, which is passed in conformity with this section shall not be open to challenge in any court of law on any ground whatsoever. What we say that is and my colleagues will attest to what the principle is, we are ousting the jurisdiction of the court and I would dare say that in our democracy the court, the judiciary is one of the most important pillars of democracy. For you to oust one, is for us to make a table that should have three legs stand on only two legs. It’s cannot be done, it should not be done. To allow this amendment to pass is to say we no longer want to be a democratic society, we’re going into some other form of governance.”