88 S.E. 437 | N.C. | 1916
The Revisal of 1905, sec. 211, provides: "No person who shall have been duly licensed to practice law as an attorney shall be debarred or deprived of his license and right so to practice law, either permanently or temporarily, unless he shall have been convicted, or in open court confessed himself guilty, of some criminal offense showing him to be unfit to be trusted in the discharge of the duties of his profession, and unless he shall be debarred according to the provisions of this chapter."
This was brought forward from the act of 1871, ch. 216.
The act of 1907, ch. 941 (Revisal, sec. 211 a), in part, provides: "An attorney at law must be debarred and removed for the following causes by the Superior Court: (1) Upon his being convicted of a crime (801) punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary." The other provisions of the act of 1907 need not be considered, because not material here.
Before the act of 1871 it was held, in Moore, ex parte,
The construction of the act of 1871 is that it "takes from the court this common-law power to purge the bar of unfit members, except in specific cases, and it fails to provide any other power to be used in its place; it is a disabling and not an enabling statute, the whole purpose seeming to be to tie the hands of the court," Kane v. Haywood,
The Court said in Ex Parte Ebbs,
"The next step in legislation is the act of 1907, and as the respondent cannot be disbarred under that, as there is no allegation that he has been convicted of a felony, and can be under the act of 1871 if it is in force, having been convicted of a criminal offense, provided it is found as a fact that he is unfit to discharge the duties of his profession, the decision of the appeal depends on the question whether the act of 1907 repeals the act of 1871.
"The later act does not purport to repeal the former, and a repeal by implication will not be adopted if by any reasonable construction the two acts can be reconciled and can stand together.
"Coke says: `It must be known that forasmuch as acts of Parliament are established with gravity, wisdom, and universal consent of the whole realm for the advancement of the commonwealth, they ought not, by any constrained construction out of the general ambiguous words of a subsequent act, to be abrogated, but ought to be maintained (802) and supported with a benign and favorable construction.' Dr.Foster's case, 11 Rep., 63. Sedgwick thus expresses the same idea: `In this country it has been said that laws are presumed to be passed with *882 deliberation, and with full knowledge of all existing ones on the same subject; and it is therefore but reasonable to conclude that the Legislature in passing a statute did not intend to interfere with or abrogate any prior law relating to the same matter, unless the repugnancy between the two is irreconcilable, and hence a repeal by implication is not favored; on the contrary, courts are bound to uphold the prior law if the two acts may well subsist together.'
"Potter's Dwarris on Statutes, 156, 157: `Every effort must be made to make all the acts stand, and the later act will not operate as a repeal of the earlier one if by any reasonable construction they can be reconciled.'"
These quotations from the authorities are taken from the opinion ofAssociate Justice Walker in S. v. Perkins,
Are, then, the two acts irreconcilable? We think not. They deal with different conditions and act upon different persons and serve purposes that are not the same.
The act of 1871 refers to persons convicted of "some criminal offense," and these cannot be disbarred unless the offense is of such character as to show them to be unfit to discharge the duties of their profession, while the act of 1907 deals only with those convicted of felony, and they must be disbarred.
When the two acts are read together, they fit into each other and make one harmonious whole, and, so considered, the legislative intent is that attorneys convicted of a felony must be disbarred, and those convicted of a less offense may be, if it is found as a fact that the criminal offense is of such character as to render them unfit to practice law; and this is the clear intimation in In re Ebbs,
Reversed.
Cited: Sanatorium v. State Treasurer,
(803)