United States State Courts
Many state courts are similarly barred from issuing advisory opinions, although there are often specific exceptions to these limitations. Some states, like Rhode Island, permit the governor to certify questions on the constitutionality of laws to the state supreme court. Also, some states require their supreme court to give advisory opinions on particular matters, such as whether proposed amendments to the state constitution violate the U.S. Constitution. The only comprehensive study of state supreme court advisory opinions is the book by M.A. Topf, "A Doubtful and Perilous Experiment: Advisory Opinions, State Constitutions, and Judicial Supremacy" (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Eight states have provisions in their constitutions permitting or requiring their supreme courts to give advisory opinions to the governor or legislature: Colorado, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and South Dakota. Two states provide for supreme court advisory opinions by statute: Alabama and Delaware. The texts of all the advisory opinion provisions are collected in M. A. Topf, "The Jurisprudence of the Advisory Opinion Process in Rhode Island," Roger Williams University Law Review, Vol. 2, Spring 1997, at 254-256. The article also gives a general treatment of how the advisory opinion process works. Topf also follows the story of the creation of a single Rhode Island advisory opinion (the only article to do so) in "The Advisory Opinion on Separation of Powers," Roger Williams University Law Review, vol. 5, Spring 2000, at 385-416.
Advisory opinions should not be confused with certified questions by one court to another, which are permissible. U.S. federal courts, when confronted with real cases or controversies in which the federal court's decision will turn in part on a question of state law, occasionally ask the highest court of the relevant state to give an authoritative answer to the state-law question, which the federal court will then apply to its resolution of the federal case (see e.g. Pullman abstention). Because the state court in such circumstances is giving an opinion that affects an actual case, it is not considered to be issuing an advisory opinion.
Read more about this topic: Advisory Opinion, National Courts, United States
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