According to Fox News, Hawaii's high court ordered a new trial in State v. Granillo, a 1990 kidnapping and sexual assault case, after finding that FBI hair and fiber testimony rested on forensic methods later discredited. Justice Todd Eddins's 91-page opinion went further: he argued that Hawaii courts should stop treating the Roberts Court as a reliable guide when interpreting the state constitution.
State supreme courts already have legal authority to read their own constitutions more broadly than the federal baseline. Eddins's opinion transforms that technical right into an open political challenge about who defines rights inside state borders. Once judges frame constitutional law as resistance to rival judges, every ruling risks being read as team sport instead of law.
The immediate fight is the retrial in Hawaii. The bigger watch: whether other state courts adopt this tone as doctrine. If liberal judges nationwide start writing opinions like manifestos against SCOTUS conservatives, the judiciary itself becomes the contested battleground.
Eddins is making a bet that legal liberals want made out loud: if Washington won't protect rights they care about, state courts build their own walls. That's lawful in many cases. It's also combustible. The more judges frame constitutional law as open resistance to rival judges, the easier it gets for the public to see every ruling as faction rather than principle. Hawaii just signaled it's willing to pay that price.
Filed to the Politics desk · Jul 18