[UPDATE 1/31/2025, 5:29 pm: As it happens, just today the North Carolina Supreme Court handed down a decision interpreting the North Carolina Constitution, McKinney v. Goins, and reached the opposite result from the Maine high court's decision below.]
An interesting (though very long) majority and dissent handed down Tuesday, in Dupuis v. Roman Catholic Bishop [UPDATE: link added]. The opinions well illustrate how many state courts interpret their state constitutions. Some very brief excerpts from the majority
Legislation reviving claims that have expired under the statutes of limitations applicable at the time of the operative events was not deemed by the framers to be a "law" within the power of the Legislature to enact…. This constitutional hostility to legislative efforts to retroactively impair rights, privileges, and/or property, viewing such efforts as beyond the Legislature's function, is reflected in the earliest of our case law [citing a case from 1823, three years after Maine became a state]….
Contemporaneous common law principles can inform the meaning of constitutional provisions because many constitutional concepts originated in the common law. Post-enactment common law and statutes can also illuminate timeless social understandings and values embedded in the Constitution. Long before the adoption of the Maine Constitution, the common law condemned the concept of retroactive liability….
In terms of sheer numbers, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution and for a lengthy period thereafter, the great majority of jurisdictions precluded the revival of claims after their statutes of limitations had expired. After the Supreme Court's decision in Campbell v. Holt (1885), in which the majority held that revival was permitted, some courts deviated from this position. If one includes jurisdictions with
constitutions that contain express anti-retroactivity provisions … then, despite the Supreme Court's view, the majority of state courts of last resort continue to adhere to the view that revival is precluded.
