ICYMI: All Living NC Governors Join Constitutional Experts to Offer Bipartisan Support for Governor Stein in Protecting Separation of Powers

As arguments continue in the Stein v. Berger and Stein v. Hall cases, all five living former North Carolina governors are voicing their bipartisan support for Governor Stein’s case to protect the Governor’s power to oversee executive branch agencies. Additionally, a constitutional expert, law professor John Orth, who co-wrote the book “The North Carolina Constitution” with Chief Justice Paul Newby, also argued that a 2024 law restricting the Governor’s longstanding power to select judges and justices to fill vacancies on the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court is unconstitutional. 

Former Governors Jim Martin, Mike Easley, Bev Perdue, Pat McCrory, and Roy Cooper filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Governor Stein’s position at the North Carolina Supreme Court. The former Governors wrote that their shared experience serving as North Carolina’s “chief executive” gives them a “deep understanding of how the separation of powers works in the real world” and emphasized that, although they are a bipartisan group, their interest in the cases is “nonpartisan” because separation of powers is a constitutional principle that “transcends politics.” 

Orth, who has taught at the University of North Carolina School of Law since 1978, filed a friend-of-the-court brief alongside UNC adjunct law professor Charles Plambeck, arguing that the State Constitution does not give the General Assembly authority to restrict the Governor’s ability to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Their filing contends that the State Constitution gives the Governor the authority to fill these appellate judicial vacancies and, thus, that the General Assembly cannot pass laws that impose restrictions on the Governor’s authority. 

The North Carolina Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Stein v. Berger and Stein v. Hall on November 10. 

Click here to read more about the former Governors’ filing.   

Click here to read more about Professors Orth’s and Plambeck’s filing.  

Click here to view Governor Stein’s filings in Stein v. Berger and Stein v. Hall.  

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