102 Iowa L. Rev. 2265 (2017)

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Abstract

Between 2010–2015, the Iowa Supreme Court decided multiple cases under article 1, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. However, the court’s reasons for deciding issues under the Iowa Constitution were less than principled. The Iowa Supreme Court’s current practice of spontaneously interpreting the Iowa Constitution raises significant jurisprudential problems: it does not necessarily require lawyers to adequately argue, brief, and preserve state constitutional issues for appeal, it does not prioritize federal or state constitutional claims in any order, and the approach seems arbitrary on its face. A more principled approach to state constitutional interpretation could remedy these issues. The primacy approach is an approach to state constitutional interpretation under which state supreme courts decide issues under the state constitution when the parties adequately argue and brief the state constitutional issue. This Note argues that the Iowa Supreme Court should adopt the primacy approach to state constitutional interpretation to continue the Court’s role as an important part of the United States’ federalist system and an imperative protector of Iowans’ individual rights, to improve the efficiency of state constitutional interpretation, and to improve the process by which the Iowa Supreme Court reaches issues under the Iowa Constitution.