ASMSU Supreme Court overrules JRR-02

The Associated Students of MSU (ASMSU) revisited one of its rulings after representatives from Campus Civil Rights (CCR) and the Office of Legal Counsel raised concerns about clarity in the language of the ruling and the majority opinion.

Judicial Ruling Report Invocation 2 (JRR-02) ruled on a question of the ASMSU president’s ability to voice an opinion differing from that of the Senate when representing ASMSU in an official capacity. The original language of JRR-02 prompted Kyleen Breslin, directing manager of CCR, and Jennifer Glad, the University’s associate legal counsel, to reach out to Chief Justice Emma Forster.

The question in JRR-02 read: “In a formal representative capacity of ASMSU, does the President have the authority to communicate a position to external parties that is contrary to a resolution passed by the ASMSU Senate?”

JRR-03 ruled on the same question, but with some differences in wording. It read: “When acting in a formal representative capacity of ASMSU, does the President have the authority to communicate solely a position to external parties that is contrary to a resolution passed by the ASMSU Senate?”

According to Forster, the language of the question in JRR-02 was revised after a discussion with Breslin and Glad. It included the word “solely,” among other changes, to reflect a stronger adherence to legal writing norms.

“We are not lawyers,” she said. “We’re obviously trying to do legal writing and sometimes we don’t know the full extent of how things could be interpreted.”

Another section that CCR indicated could be unclear was the first sentence of the last paragraph in the majority opinion of JRR-02, which read, “The Court emphasizes that the ASMSU President, when acting in their personal capacity as a student of MSU, is permitted to express opinions in opposition to the ASMSU Senate as they deem appropriate.”

Forster said that writing “as they deem appropriate” could indicate that the president may only give their opinion when the Senate deems it is appropriate, as opposed to the president themself. The majority opinion in JRR-03 was written to clarify this ambiguity.

Forster said that it was her decision to bring the question back to the court after CCR met with her to address its concerns with the language of the ruling. “It wasn’t an administrative, top-down decision,” she said.

According to her, there was no pressure on any of the justices to change their ruling from JRR-02, but she wanted to give everyone a chance to look at the new language and understand why she asked them to rule again.

Forster said the new resolution accomplishes the same thing as the first, but does so in a way that has less room for misinterpretation. She also said it was a good opportunity for the Supreme Court to improve going forward.

“It was obviously a good learning opportunity for us to review what we had written and see how an outsider sort of read that and saw it, versus what our conversation actually was when writing it,” she said.