Cite as 2016 Ark. 157
Amendment 80, section 3 of the Arkansas Constitution gives this court the authority to make rules regarding pleading, practice, and procedure for the courts of this state. It states, "The Supreme Court shall prescribe the rules of pleading, practice and procedure for all courts; provided these rules shall not abridge, enlarge or modify any substantive right and shall preserve the right of trial by jury as declared in this Constitution." In Rockwell Automation, supra, this court cited this provision of the Arkansas Constitution as authority for striking down the nonparty-fault provision of the Civil Justice Reform Act as violative of the separation-of-powers clause found in article 4, section 2.[1] The Rockwell court acknowledged that the legislature has the power to enact "substantive" law, which it defined as "the part of the law that creates, defines, and regulates the rights, duties, and powers of parties." 2009 Ark. 241, at 8, 308 S.W.3d at 141 (internal citations omitted). Conversely, it defined procedural law, which is the exclusive province of the supreme court, as "the rules that prescribe the steps for having a right or duty judicially enforced, as opposed to the law that defines the specific rights or duties themselves." Id.
With the substantive/procedural dichotomy in mind, we turn to the challenged "Failure to Comply" provision of our Mandatory Seat Belt Use law, codified at Arkansas Code Annotated section 27-37-703 (Repl. 2014):
(a)(1) The failure of an occupant to wear a properly adjusted and fastened seat belt shall not be admissible into evidence in a civil action.
- ↑ No person or collection of persons, being of one of these departments, shall exercise any power belonging to either of the others, except in the instances hereinafter expressly directed or permitted.
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