Page:Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, 351 Ark. 31 (2002).pdf/22

52 time or even by this court on its own motion. ''See Vanderpool v. Fidelity & Cas. Ins. Co.'', 327 Ark. 407, 939 S.W.2d 280 (1997). Regardless of this argument, we believe that the issue of nonjusticiability was laid to rest in a previous school-funding case in which we discussed the distinctive roles of the legislative and judicial branches. ''See DuPree v. Alma Sch. Dist. No. 30'', 279 Ark. 340, 651 S.W.2d 90 (1983). The State never discusses DuPree in connection with this point, but in that case, we quoted favorably from a seminal school-funding opinion by the California Supreme Court: "The dispositive answer to the above arguments is simply that this court is not now engaged in—nor is it about to undertake—the 'search for tax equity' which defendants prefigure. As defendants themselves recognize, it is the Legislature which by virtue of institutional competency as well as constitutional function is assigned that difficult and perilous quest. Our task is much more narrowly defined: it is to determine whether the trial court committed prejudicial legal error in determining whether the state school financing system at issue before it was violative of our state constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal protection of the laws insofar as it denies equal educational opportunity to the public school students of this state. If we determine that no such error occurred, we must affirm the trial court's judgment, leaving the matter of achieving a constitutional system to the body equipped and designed to perform that function." DuPree, 279 Ark. at 349-50, 651 S.W.2d at 95 (quoting Serrano v. Priest, 18 Cal. 3d 728, 759, n. 38, 557 P.2d 929, 946, 135 Cal. Rptr. 345, 362 (1976) (internal citations omitted)). We continue to adhere to our opinion in DuPree and its discussion of the respective roles of the legislative and judicial branches relative to school funding. Clearly, the roles are different, and we conclude that the two branches do not operate at cross purposes in the school-funding context.

[4] We further observe that the Education Article in the Arkansas Constitution designates the State as the entity to maintain a general, suitable, and efficient system of free public schools: "Intelligence and virtue being the safeguards of liberty and the bulwark of a free and good government, the State shall ever"