Page:Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, 351 Ark. 31 (2002).pdf/21

Rh that Judge Imber's 1994 order was never appealed after it reached finality, but that the State and Lake View specifically appealed from Judge Kilgore's order. Accordingly, it is the 2001 order that is before us for review.

With this in mind, we turn to the merits of this appeal. Because the State's points on appeal go to the heart of the matter, we will consider them first.

IV. Justiciability
The State devotes a substantial portion of its opening brief to its argument that the constitutionality of the school-funding system is a nonjusticiable issue for the courts. In the State's view, the courts unduly interfere and even usurp legislative and executive branch functions when they declare school-funding systems unconstitutional. This, the State maintains, equates to a mandate to the General Assembly to appropriate more funds for the public schools which violates the separation-of-powers clauses in the Arkansas Constitution. See Ark. Const. art. 4, §§ 1, 2. Moreover, the State contends, citing Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), that the funding of our public schools is a political question involving public policy and the interplay between the State and local school districts, which is best left to the General Assembly to resolve. In support of its nonjusticiability argument, the State directs our attention to five cases from other jurisdictions. See Ex parte James v. Alabama Coalition for Equity, Inc., 836 So. 2d 813 (Ala. 2002); Marrero v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 559 Pa. 14, 739 A.2d 110 (1999); Coalition for Adequacy & Fairness in School Funding v. Chiles, 680 So. 2d 400 (Fla. 1996); Committee for Educational Rights v. Edgar, 174 III. 2d 1, 672 N.E.2d 1178 (1996); City of Pawtucket v. Sundlun, 662 A.2d 40 (R.I. 1995). As a corollary to this argument, the State urges that the courts should avoid getting "mired down" in endless litigation in an effort to supervise the public schools.

[2, 3] The State's nonjusticiability point appears to have been raised for the first time in this appeal. The State implicitly claims that a violation of separation of powers is a question of subject-matter jurisdiction, which, of course, can be raised at any