193 A. 46 | Pa. | 1937
Argued June 7, 1937. The case comes before this court on a special writ of certiorari, removing the record from the Common Pleas Court of Dauphin County. It is a mandamus proceeding instituted by John B. Kelly, a taxpayer of the County of Philadelphia and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with the consent of the Attorney General, to compel the Secretary of the Commonwealth to comply with the provisions of the Act of May 6, 1937, No. 139, and to advertise a proposed amendment to Article XIV of *528 the Constitution of Pennsylvania permitting the consolidation of the City and County governments of Philadelphia. No amendment to this article has been submitted to the people since 1909, and the subject matter of the suggested constitutional revision has never been submitted as an amendment. Counsel for the Secretary of the Commonwealth moved the court below to quash the writ that had been issued on the petition for mandamus. The district attorney, recorder of deeds, sheriff, clerk of the court of Quarter Sessions, and two of the three County Commissioners of that county were granted leave by this court to intervene as parties defendant, and they also moved to quash the writ.
The short time available for publication of the proposed amendment prior to the election of 1937, as required under the law, made imperative a speedy determination by this court of the question involved. The sole contention raised in the motions to quash is that the provisions of Article XVIII* prohibit the submission *529 of the proposed amendment, because other amendments to the Constitution were submitted to the electors in 1933, less than five years from the election to be held this Fall. The question briefly stated is: May the Constitution be amended oftener than once in five years?
Armstrong v. King,
We are asked to reconsider the conclusion reached, the contention being that the facts in the case did not *530
justify the broad ruling, which was therefore obiter dictum (Com. v. Shawell,
In Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, (8th ed. 1927), Vol. 1, page 121, notes, it is stated: ". . . when a question involving important public or private rights, extending through all coming time, has been passed upon on a single occasion, and which decision can in no just sense be said to have been acquiesced in, it is not only the right, but the duty, of the court, when properly called upon, to re-examine the questions involved, and again subject them to judicial scrutiny. We are by no *531
means unmindful of the salutary tendency of the rule staredecisis, but at the same time we cannot be unmindful of the lessons furnished by our own consciousness, as well as by judicial history, of the liability to error and the advantages of review." This old and well-established rule has been recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in the recent case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish,
The clause of the Constitution involved here, and in theArmstrong case, is a proviso, the office of which is to qualify, restrain or otherwise modify the general language of an enabling provision. A proviso is to be strictly construed (U.S. v. Dickson,
The constitutional debates of 1873 were quoted to sustain that case. See 5 Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1873, pp. 9-14. Such statements must be understood to be merely the personal opinion of individual members of the Convention. What the Convention adopted, and what the electors of the Commonwealth accepted, is the Constitution as it is written, and its clear meaning cannot be distorted to fit the views of those particular delegates. It must be assumed that the people who voted upon the Constitution gave to the words employed their common and ordinary significance. Justice PAXSON inCommonwealth v. Balph,
Considering Article XVIII as a whole, it is complete in itself and has no reference to matters not therein dealt with. It first sets forth the procedure for submission of amendments to the people. It provides that any amendment or amendments may be proposed, and if agreed to by the legislature and recorded as required, it or they shall be advertised for three (3) months, and if the next assembly agrees to such proposed amendment or amendments, they shall be published, and, as proposed, shall be voted for by the people; if such amendment *533 or amendments be approved, it or they shall become part of the Constitution, but no amendment or amendments shall be submitted oftener than once in five (5) years. The proviso does not pertain to any possible unrelated amendments that might be offered at a future time to other Articles. It is limited to an amendment that has been submitted to the people and voted on. Evidencing this thought, the proviso begins with "but" and is separated from the rest of the sentence only by a semicolon. It is not a new sentence, but is part of what precedes it and is linked with it in meaning, the entire sentence carrying through a single thought. Thus understood it means that after a particular amendment, or amendments, has been once submitted another like amendment, or one similar in substance, to the same article cannot be proposed or submitted within five years. The word "oftener" substantiates this conclusion. It is sometimes defined as "more frequently," and implies repetition, i. e., repetition of the same amendment or subject matter. The words "than once" following "oftener" show that the only reference intended by the proviso is to an amendment, the substance of which has already been submitted "once." It prohibits the "submission" of such an amendment "oftener" than once in five years. The only logical explanation of this manner of drafting Article XVIII is that the electors intended to permit the submission of amendments as frequently as they properly passed through the prescribed steps with the sole prohibition that after an amendment had been once submitted, it or one substantially related could not again be submitted until a period of five years has elapsed.
As Judge HARGEST of the court below noted when theArmstrong case was before him, the constitutional convention of 1920 composed in part of some of the most eminent lawyers of this State, regarded this "time-lock" provision as ambiguous and as having different meanings; *534
he quoted the remarks of Mr. Justice SCHAFFER of this court, then Attorney General and Chairman of that Committee, and Judge REED of Pittsburgh, at one time an eminent jurist, now deceased, to sustain the proposition that the provision was ambiguous and susceptible of many meanings. If it be so considered, it is obvious that the interpretation placed upon it by the legislature for a long period of time, unobjected to, should have a persuasive influence on this court. Cooley, op. cit. supra, p. 147, states: ". . . a construction of the Constitution adopted by the legislative department, and long accepted by the various agencies of government and the people, is, where the meaning of the language construed is capable of two interpretations, entitled to great weight." We said inDuane v. Philadelphia,
Prior to the decision of the Armstrong case, this provision of the Constitution was interpreted as we now interpret it. The late Judge MILLER, in Long v. SchoolDistrict of Cheltenham Township, 36 Montgomery Co. Law Rep. 253, in construing this article said at page 258: "As we view it, the language of the article is clear in meaning and entirely free from doubt or ambiguity. . . . The clause 'but no amendment . . . shall be submitted oftener than once in five years' . . . clearly refers to such as has already been submitted and rejected *535 in light of the language used . . . it refers to an amendment that has been submitted before and rejected and not to one that was never before submitted."
The proviso does not read, "The Constitution shall not be amended oftener than once in five years," and it cannot be supposed that the framers intended to impose a blanket time limitation on the right to make necessary changes in the fundamental law. The result of the rigid interpretation adopted by this Court in the Armstrong case is productive of a large number of amendments being submitted at one time, which the people cannot carefully consider.
We are all of one mind that there is no absolute bar to amendment of the Constitution oftener than once in five years; the only limitation being that which we have here pointed out. In none of the cases cited by the intervening appellees as sustaining the Armstrong case is there a parallel to it except in Taylor v. King,
We express no opinion on the breadth or scope of the proposed constitutional amendment or its effect on the duly elected or appointed public officers who are now fulfilling the functions of their office in the County of Philadelphia, nor its operation upon the tenure of office of the judges of the various courts of that County.
It is ordered that a peremptory writ be issued as prayed for.