State v. Herndon

I dissent because the majority has handed down an advisory opinion solely to overrule a case, State v. Bickerstaff, 320 Ark. 641, 899 S.W.2d 68 (1995), without resolving the duck hunting dispute at issue. The opinion simply overrules Bickerstaff for purposes of deciding our jurisdiction in future cases — not for purposes of deciding the case at hand. Overruling a case that does not decide a pending case is clearly advisory on an academic issue. We have never done that before. We enter troubled waters when we engage in issuing legal edicts apart from deciding the case before us.

This court’s…