259 Pa. 160 | Pa. | 1917
And now, July 20, 1917, the court being of opinion that the Act of Assembly, approved April 24, 1917, entitled “An act to designate the several judicial districts of the Commonwealth as required by the Constitution, and to provide for the election and commissioning of judges learned in the law in said districts,” is unconstitutional and void, the decree of the court below is reversed, the demurrer to appellant’s bill is overruled, and Cyrus E. Woods, secretary of the Commonwealth, is restrained and enjoined from sending to the county commissioners of Clinton County a notice designating the office of judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the 57th judicial district, as an office for which candidates are to be nominated in Clinton County at the fall primary in the year 1917, the costs below and on this appeal to be paid out of funds of the Commonwealth under the control of the appellee; An opinion setting forth the reasons for this decree will be filed at a later date.
On April 24, 1917, the Governor approved an act of assembly, entitled “An act to designate the several judicial districts of the Commonwealth as required by the Constitution and to provide for the election and commissioning of judges learned in the law for the said districts.” The fourteenth section of the schedule of the Constitution, which is a substantive part of that instrument, provides that “The- General Assembly shall, at the next succeeding session after each decennial census and not oftener, designate the several judicial districts as required by this Constitution.” Notwithstanding this plain provision, the general judicial apportionment Act of July 18, 1901, dividing the State into fifty-six judicial districts, was still in force when the legislature met this year. The only change made by the Act of April 24, 1917, in the districts as designated by the Act of 1901, is the creation of Clinton County as a separate judicial district. It has a population of less than forty thousand, and, at the time of.the approval of the Act of 1917, formed, with Cameron and Elk Counties, the twenty-fifth judicial district. By the Act of 1917 it is made the fifty-seventh. F. M. Noecker, one of its resident taxpayers, filed a bill in the court below, averring that the Act of 1917'is unconstitutional, (1) in that it is violative of the fourteenth section of the schedule of the Constitution, and (2) because it violates Section 5, Article Y, of the Constitution, which provides as follows: “Whenever a county shall contain forty thousand inhabitants it shall constitute a separate judicial district, and shall elect one judge learned in the law: and the General Assembly shall provide for additional judges, as the business of the said districts may require. Counties containing a population less than is sufficient to constitute separate districts shall be formed into convenient single districts, or, if necessary, may be attached to contiguous districts as the General Assem
The words, “the General Assembly shall, at the next succeeding session after each decennial census and not of tener, designate the several judicial districts as required by this Constitution,” are mandatory in form, and indicate a clear intention on the part of the framers of the Constitution, and of the people who adopted it, that judicial apportionment acts are to be passed at definitely designated sessions of the legislature. The reason for this requirement is obvious. The judicial apportionment of the State has for its basis the population of the various counties, and the one session of the legislature at which an apportionment can be made with fairness and a degree of accuracy is the one next succeeding the taking of a decennial census. If a judicial apportionment act can be passed at any session of the legislature succeeding the one immediately following such a census, the words, “the next succeeding session,” are utterly without meaning. They were used for a purpose which is not to be thwarted by giving them the strained meaning of “at any succeeding session.” They mean, in common parlance, “immediately succeeding,” or “immediately following,” and are to be so interpreted. It is, therefore, to be concluded that what the Constitution
Nothing decided in Com. v. Clark, 7 W. & S. 127, and Com. v. Maxwell, 27 Pa. 444, two of our cases cited by the learned attorney general and his deputy is in conflict with the foregoing view. The eighth section of the sixth article of the amended Constitution of 1838 declared that all officers whose election or appointment was not provided for in that instrument should be elected or appointed as might be directed by law. The election or appointment of canal commissioners was not provided for in the Constitution, and it was therefore to be provided for by law. By section eleven of the schedule appended to the Constitution it was provided that the appointing power should remain as theretofore; that all officers in the appointment of the executive department should continue in the exercise of the duties of their respective offices until the legislature should pass such laws as might be required by the eighth section of the sixth article of the Constitution. The same section of the schedule directed that those laws were to be enacted by the first legislature under the amended Constitution. In Commonwealth v. Clark, Clark was elected a canal commissioner in 1843, under the provisions of an act of assembly passed April 18th of that year, providing for the election of canal commissioners. The proceeding to oust him was instituted on the ground that the said act of assembly wras wholly un
We have distinctly and most properly held that the life of a judicial apportionment act is ten years. “Now we are prepared to see the relevancy and effect of the fourteenth section of the schedule, which "seems to be out of place, but which has no ambiguity in its interpretation. It reads thus: ‘The General Assembly shall at the next succeeding session after each decennial census, and not opener, designate the several judicial districts, as required by this Constitution.’ The italics I
As, for the reason stated, the Act of April 24, 1917, is in violation of c, constitutional requirement, the second objection to its constitutionality need not be considered. In support of the decree of July 20, 1917, this opinion is filed.