36 N.Y.S. 1013 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1896
By statute the city of Brooklyn is divided into judicial districts, with the requirement that a justice of the peace be elected in each district. They are given the same jurisdiction within the city that justices of the peace of towns have. Laws of 1850, chapter 102; Brooklyn Charter, title 21. The term of office is four years, beginning and ending at May 1. The plaintiff was elected for the third district at the general election in 1892, for a term to end at May 1, 1896. Four months of the term, therefore, remain. The defendant Snitzpan was elected to succeed him at the last general election. The new State Constitution adopted in 1894 separated city elections (except in cities of a population below fifty thousand) from national and state elections by requiring them to be held in odd numbered years. In order to conform terms of office to this system, it provided that all terms existing on January 1,1895, which would expire thereafter in an even numbered year, and not at the end thereof, were abridged so as to expire at the end of the preceding year. Article 12, section 3. This fits the plaintiff’s case, and his term thus abridged expired with the year 1895, unless the proviso at the end of the section excepts the office of justice of the peace in Brooklyn; and this brings us to the exact point of the controversy. That proviso is that the section does not apply “ to elections of any judicial officer, except judges and justices of inferior local courts.” The plaintiff insists that, within the meaning of this language as used in the Constitution, he was not a justice of an inferior local court. He bases this insistence upon the assertion that courts of justices of the peace of towns never came under that designation, and that therefore like courts in cities do not. It seems to me that this claim grows' out of the error of supposing that this nomenclature in respect to minor courts was new to the Constitution of this state. Under the colonial government all judicial officers, beginning with justices of the peace and going up to justices of the Supreme Court, were appointed, not elected; and this method continued under the state government until the Constitution of 1846 went into effect. Street’s
In order to get a decision of the question involved, counsel
However, as it was stipulated that the main question should be decided, there is not likely to be any further unlawful interference, and the motion to continue the injunction is ' denied.
Motion denied.