Funding the Judicial Department at a Level the Supreme Judicial Court Deems "Essential to Its Existence and Functioning as a Court" Is Required by Doctrines of Comity and Duties Imposed by Maine's Constitution

This Article develops ideas and arguments relative to judicial funding initially advanced by this Author in two op-ed pieces previously published in the Maine Lawyers Review. Beyond elaborating and more carefully documenting (with footnote references) points previously made, this Article undertakes to lay out the judicial department’s unique status as one of three co-equal and coordinate branches of Maine’s governmental structure. It is this status that separates the judicial department from all of the other agencies of state government. The Article further argues that this status gives rise to a duty on the part of the legislative and executive departments to fund the judicial arm of our governmental structure at that level deemed necessary by the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, also known as the Law Court, to carry out its constitutional duties.

The discharge of this legislative-executive duty both recognizes the judiciary’s co-equal status in our structure of government, and enables the judiciary to, in fact, discharge its constitutional duties. Conversely, a failure by the legislative-executive departments to fund the judicial department at the level the court deems necessary leaves the judicial department beholden, and subservient to, the other two departments, and prevents the judiciary from fully meeting its constitutional duties. These are not conditions contemplated, or permitted, by Maine’s Constitution.