202 Mich. 536 | Mich. | 1918
In this proceeding plaintiff filed its petition in the circuit court of Wayne county for a writ of mandamus to compel defendant in the performance of his prescribed official duties to prepare, countersign, and transmit to the city treasurer certain school bonds which plaintiff had authorized and negotiated at a rate of interest exceeding four per cent, per annum.
While in defendant’s formal answer to an order to show cause other questions are raised, the direct and controlling reason for refusal involved and argued here is that the proposed issue of bonds authorized by plaintiff bore a rate of interest in excess of the limit fixed by law.
“The legislature shall pass no local or special act in any case where a general act can be made applicable, and whether a general act can be made applicable shall be a judicial question. No local or special act shall take effect until approved by a majority of the electors voting thereon in the district to be affected.”
This law is both localized and specialized in its application to the amendment of an act stamped with those attributes. Aside from the contention of plaintiff that its relation to the subject of education oper
That laws analogous in purpose and provisions to the one under consideration have, though dealing with education, generally been regarded as local and special both in litigation and legislation, is evidenced in many ways — by numerous decisions of this court, many briefs filed by able counsel in which they are so treated without controversy, and as a general rule by the legislature when dealing with them. The act of 1869 “relative to free schools in the city of Detroit,” with its amendments, has been carried under that title as a local act in the. volumes of local laws published “by authority” since its enactment. A concurrent resolution of the legislature of 1869 required that its acts should be printed and bound in two volumes, the first to contain all acts of a general nature, with joint and concurrent resolutions, the second volume to contain charters, etc., and other acts of a local character. This act relative to the schools of Detroit is in the second volume. In that year the case of People v. Board of Education of Detroit, 18 Mich. 409, was decided, and in an able opinion by Chief Justice Cooley the posi
“These are conferred by special acts, and in all other particulars the primary school law controls the union school districts iñ such localities.”
That the legislature regarded school legislation of this nature as local and special is indicated by the language found in other enactments. In Act No. 61, Pub. Acts 1911 (2 Comp. Laws 1915, § 5766), which provided for changing the boundaries of school districts, certain action is authorized “regardless of whether such school districts were formed * * * or created under any local or special law.”
Many similar authoritative utterances are to be found in the statutes and decisions of this State answering negatively the proposition of plaintiff’s counsel that Act No. 322 of 1915 is not to be regarded as a local or special act as either term is generally used and legally construed, unless it can be said some provision in the Constitution of 1909 expressly or by implication puts the legislature above and beyond constitutional limitations when dealing, with education.
While it can with truth be broadly said that in its chief essentials the Constitution has committed the whole subject of education to the legislature, that statement is qualified to a degree by direct mandates in the article on “education” and no exception appears in that article or elsewhere in the Constitution providing that the legislature in enacting laws upon that subject can ignore the requirements and limitations prescribed in the article dealing directly with the legislative department. Plaintiff's contention carried to its logical conclusion places the legislature in matters of education outside the pale of all such mandates and restrictions.. In Burton v. Koch, 184 Mich. 250, cited by plaintiff, where numerous cases are referred to, “upon the point that the legislature under the Constitution has substantially complete control over school districts,” it is not said and cannot be construed as meaning that those plenary powers, though recognized as broad and comprehensive, are independent of express constitutional limitations, for it is said later in the opinion of the act under consideration, which relates to education:
“The court has nothing to do with the wisdom of*543 this legislation. The legislative power, with certain constitutional limitations, is vested elsewhere.”
It cannot in reason be otherwise than that all powers of the legislature, whatever they may be, are, under and by virtue of the Constitution, subject to general constitutional mandates and limitations imposed on legislation without reservation.
In the official address issued by the constitutional convention to the people of the State explaining proposed changes in the Constitution and the reason for each, as the law required, it is said of the inhibition this act disregards that:
“It is intended to eliminate the vast volume of local legislation which has burdened the legislature in recent years and in many instances brought discredit upon it. * * * It will not only relieve the legislature, but will also remove one of the greatest sources of evil in modern legislative bodies.”
Prepared and presumably adopted with such intent and purpose the generalized negative mandate against any local or special legislation except as defined,- without attempt to enumerate any particular subjects of legislation which are prohibited, or excepted, indicates an éxpansion rather than restriction of the scope of limitation, to the exclusion of implied exceptions. Anderson v. Cloud County, 77 Kan. 721.
This very question of local legislation as applied to education was under consideration in the constitutional convention and debated (Vol. 1, page 193, Cons. Conv. Debates). Had it been the sense of the convention that so important subject as education should be excepted from the inhibition of section 30, it could, and presumptively would, have been so provided in unequivocal terms. So far as a failure to do so after the attention of the convention was called to the subject aids construction, it is persuasive that such was not the intention.
For the reasons stated we are impelled to conclude that the order of the lower court granting a writ of •mandamus herein must be reversed, but without costs, as the issue is between officials acting in good faith to test a legal question of public interest.