Student Court judges said they tackled four cases this academic year, making this year’s court the most active one in nearly 20 years.
The court worked on cases this year ruling on the separation of powers between executive members within the Student Association, closing a two-year case between an SA graduate senator and the SA and overseeing two complaints filed between SA members. Court judges said they worked to amend the court bylaws into the new SA constitution this year and advised future court leaders to continue explaining their opinions after closing a case to increase the court’s campus presence.
SA Chief Court Justice Wayne Arminivage said he worked to add the court’s bylaws into the SA’s online governing documents to ease access. He said he used his constitutional law knowledge from studying as an undergraduate at Penn State University to increase transparency between members involved in a court case, speaking regularly with The Hatchet to explain case opinions.
“I felt that I could serve the SA a lot better in a judicial capacity than a political capacity because that’s what my background was in,” he said.
The court is an independent judicial branch that decides on complaints in the SA executive and legislative branches and determines the constitutionality of SA actions, according to the SA’s website. This year’s court consisted of one chief judge and three associate judges, leaving an associate seat vacant, the website states.
Arminivage said he began serving as chief judge last fall continuing to work on a case between an SA graduate senator and the SA that alleged misrepresentation of graduate students – a case in progress for nearly two years. He said the case should not have taken two years to close, but the court refiled the case twice, which delayed the judges from making a final ruling.
“I know that having served for those two years, I watched that things moved pretty slowly,” he said. “I know even compared to the court today how slow things seem to move this year. It used to be significantly worse.”
Arminivage said he had hoped to digitize case opinions and place them on the SA website, but he could not fulfill his goal because of the relatively large number of court cases this year and the switch to online classes. He said digitizing the past court opinions would provide SA senators and students seeking the court’s help easier access to the documents when filing lawsuits.
He said the physical documents for court precedents are currently stored in the GW Library archives in Virginia, which required him to comb through decade-old boxes of SA documents when working on decisions for this year’s cases.
“I wanted to avoid that ever having to be done by judges in the future,” Arminivage said.
He said the most challenging case the court heard this year questioned the constitutionality of three members of the SA executive – SA President SJ Matthews, Executive Vice President Amy Martin and Vice President for Judicial and Legislative Affairs Logan Basch – serving on the constitutional committee. The court ruled that the trio could not constitutionally serve on the committee because permitting executive members to serve on senate committees would breach the standard of separation of powers.
“It was a very learnable moment for everyone on the court to have to make that decision while knowing the correct legal answer might result in people’s feelings getting hurt,” he said. “That was a difficult choice for us.”
SA Associate Court Justice Ian Haimowitz, a senior majoring in international affairs, said he wrote the court’s opinion regarding the question of the SA’s separation of powers, stating the principle is “inherent” in the constitution. He said writing the court opinions for a case challenged him as an undergraduate because he had not learned how to write an opinion piece – a skill taught in law school.
SA Associate Court Justice Britt Lewis said the court did not discourage hearing any case filed from a student, contributing to the relatively large number of cases the court addressed this year. Lewis said he hopes the new SA president will select justices who represent both the undergraduate and graduate student body to ensure adequate representation.
“I think that it’s really important to have a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students, and the GW student body is pretty unique in that there are more graduate students than undergraduate students, and it can feel pretty separate on campus a lot,” Britt said.
SA Associate Court Justice Idil Karatas said serving on the court allowed her to gain more experience in the field of law and said the court must refer to previous opinions from past courts to stay “consistent” in their decisions.
She said the judges were not able to meet in person to decide on the most recent cases involving an SA senator’s complaint that the Joint Elections Commissions – the body that oversees SA elections – discriminated against some students when postponing elections to early April. Karatas said the judges came to a decision to dismiss the case via phone calls and video conferences.
“The goal is if you’re making a decision, if you’re educating on something, you want to make sure that it’s fair and equitable, and you want to make sure that you’re applying the law appropriately,” she said. “You don’t want to leave any room for mistakes.”
