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Planned Parenthood of Middle Tennessee v. Sundquist9/15/2000
See Davis, 842 S.W.2d at 600. This is due, in large part, to affinity of purpose. Both documents were written with the intent to reserve to the people various liberties and to protect the free exercise of those liberties from governmental intrusion.
It is also due in part to the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, which provides that the federal constitution is the ultimate "Law of the Land." See U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2. It essentially mandates that no Tennessee law, whether statute, rule, or constitution, may operate to deprive a Tennessean any right afforded by the federal constitution. See Miller v. State, 584 S.W.2d 758, 760 (Tenn. 1979).
Therefore, Tennessee courts are rightfully reluctant to find greater protection from the text of the state constitution where the protections of the federal constitution suffice. As a result, more interpretive case law is generated in regard to the federal constitution. See Richard S. Wirtz, Foreward: Interpreting the Tennessee Constitution, 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 405, 406 (1994). Therefore, analysis of case law interpreting the federal constitution is often a first step in interpreting provisions of our own constitution that are similar in wording, intent, or purpose.
It is equally without question, however, that the provisions of our Tennessee Declaration of Rights from which the right to privacy emanates differ from the federal Bill of Rights in marked respects. In Davis, we found that the right to privacy guaranteed by the Tennessee Constitution sprang from the express grants of rights in Article I, sections 3, 7, 19, and 27, and also from the grants of liberty in Article I, sections 1, 2, and 8. See Davis, 842 S.W.2d at 599-600.
These protections contained in our Declaration of Rights are more particularly stated than those stated in the federal Bill of Rights. For example, the explicit guarantee of freedom of worship found under the United States Constitution occupies but sixteen words in an amendment generally guaranteeing freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. See U.S. Const. amend. I.
In contrast, the guarantee of worship under the Tennessee Constitution exists in its own paragraph constituting eighty-one words. It characterizes mankind's right to worship as "a natural and indefeasible right" and declares "that no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience." Tenn. Const. art I, § 3. This Court has said that the language of this section, when compared to the guarantee of religious freedom contained in the federal constitution, is a stronger guarantee of religious freedom. See Carden v. Bland, 288 S.W.2d 718, 721 (Tenn. 1956).
Tennessee's guarantees of free speech and free press are similarly more descriptive than the federal grant. The verbal expression of these basic freedoms in our constitution is infused with a strong sense of individuality and personal liberty: "The free communication of thoughts and opinions, is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write, and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty." Tenn. Const. art. I, § 19.
While these differences in language and expression have yet to give rise to recognition of a substantial difference in protection of speech, this Court has not foreclosed the possibility that our constitution might offer greater protection to speech in certain contexts. See, e.g., Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 866 S.W.2d at 525 (noting finding coextensive protection in obscenity context does not mean provisions are "ident
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