The Arizona Supreme Court is the state court on which Clint Bolick serves as a justice. In the excerpts, the court appears in two roles: as the institution whose case law Bolick describes from his own experience on the bench, and as the body that has ruled on the constitutionality of Arizona’s education savings account program.
Clint Bolick and the court
Bob Zadek introduced Bolick as a justice and judge on the Arizona Supreme Court, describing him as the founder of the Institute for Justice and the author of Grassroots Tyranny: The Limits of Federalism Local Leviathan: Clint Bolick on Grassroots Tyranny (2018). In a later segment of the same episode, Zadek said Bolick was appointed to the court in 2016 by Governor Doug Ducey, and described him as a warrior for economic freedom who had argued and won cases in the US Supreme Court, the Arizona Supreme Court, and many state and federal courts Local Leviathan: Clint Bolick on Grassroots Tyranny (2018).
Bolick himself, answering a caller’s question about general warrants, said the issue was one he had not encountered in either his legal practice or his time as a justice on the Arizona Supreme Court. He reasoned that when a case ends, any type of warrant would end with it, because a court’s jurisdiction is based on the existence of a case or controversy, and once that case or controversy ends, the jurisdiction of the court ends as well. He added that he had not seen the question in the context of a particular case Local Leviathan: Clint Bolick on Grassroots Tyranny (2018).
Warrant jurisprudence
In the same exchange, Bolick said the warrant power of police and local governments, and of the national government as well, is subject to abuse, but that the requirement of a warrant for invading people’s privacy is very significant and is intended as a safeguard of liberties. He said that in a number of cases as a justice he had voted to require warrants, giving two examples: police use of GPS devices on commercial vehicles, and obtaining information from people’s cell phones. He also said that in many instances warrants have not been required where they should be required Local Leviathan: Clint Bolick on Grassroots Tyranny (2018).
The caller, identified as Jacob, had asked about general warrants and why warrants are not deactivated when a case is dismissed, describing warrants that remain in effect sometimes for years after the underlying case has been resolved. Zadek framed the question for the audience by saying that general warrants are generally unconstitutional and asking Bolick to explain the concept. Bolick’s answer did not supply a general definition of a general warrant; he said the question was a good one to which he frankly did not know the answer Local Leviathan: Clint Bolick on Grassroots Tyranny (2018).
Education savings accounts
The court returns in a 2022 episode on Arizona’s education savings account program, in a conversation between Zadek and Matt Beienburg. Zadek put a supermarket analogy to Beienburg, drawn from Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek about a decade earlier: imagine supermarkets all owned by the government, with shoppers required to patronize the one in their zip code and told they could spend $100 a week there, and compare the quality of that government-owned supermarket with compulsory customers to the present arrangement Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022).
Beienburg agreed the analogy was apt, and drew a distinction between the ESA program and public funding for private schools. He said the ESA program is not the government handing a check to a private school; rather, taxpayer funding is essentially returned to taxpayers, who then have flexibility to use it—for a private school, at-home education, tutoring, a religious or secular private school. He then cited the Arizona Supreme Court: the court, he said, has already ruled on this, and the distinction matters because the program is not simply taking public funds and directing them to a private entity but returning taxpayer public funds back to those taxpayers, who are then given the ability to use and direct it as they think best for their children Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022).
Beienburg did not name the case, the date of the ruling, or the constitutional provision it turned on. The excerpt ends with Zadek’s name and no further text, so whatever he said next is not available.
Across episodes
The two episodes do not argue the same question about the court. In 2018 the court is present through Bolick’s own account of his votes and his uncertainty about general warrants; in 2022 it appears only as an authority Beienburg invokes for the proposition that ESA funds are returned to taxpayers rather than directed to private entities. The excerpts show no development between the earlier and later treatment, and no exchange in which the two guests address each other’s characterization of the court.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when the Arizona Supreme Court was founded, how its justices are selected or retained, or what its jurisdiction is beyond the general principle Bolick states about case or controversy. They do not name the ESA case Beienburg refers to, its holding, or the constitutional provisions at issue, and they do not give the outcome of any other case decided by the court. Nothing in the excerpts describes the court’s composition, its docket, or its relationship to lower Arizona courts.