Brooks v. Hydorn
| Decision Date | 11 July 1889 |
| Citation | 76 Mich. 273,42 N.W. 1122 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | BROOKS v. HYDORN. |
Application for mandamus by Henry A. Brooks against Henry A Hydorn.
The legislature at its last session passed an act which sought to abolish the office of two justices of the peace in the city of Grand Rapids. The respondent is one of the persons thus attempted to be legislated out of office. This act provided among other things, that the files, records, and docket belonging to respondent's office, from and after the 4th day of July, 1889, should be filed with the justice of the peace whose term of office should soonest expire by its own limitation. Such justice, it is admitted, is Thomas Walsh. The relator, Henry A. Brooks, shows that on the 7th day of May, 1889, he recovered a judgment in an action of assumpsit before the respondent against one James Gibbs for $100 damages and $5 costs, which judgment is unsatisfied, and this is admitted. Brooks, being entitled to an execution on said judgment, and desiring to have the same issued, requested the said respondent on the 5th day of July 1889, to deliver to the said justice, Thomas Walsh, the files, records, and docket belonging to respondent's said office of justice of the peace, as required by the provisions of said act of the legislature, in order that the relator might have an execution issued by the said Thomas Walsh for the collection of his said judgment. The respondent refused to comply with said request, and declared that he would not deliver such records and docket, but should retain the same and continue to hold his office, claiming that the same was not discontinued or abolished by said act of the legislature. The relator asks that the writ of mandamus issue from this court to compel such delivery, and, in effect, a vacation of said respondent's office. The act has not been authoritatively published, but we have been furnished with a certified copy of the same from the office of the secretary of state, and the importance of the question is such that it demands a speedy decision.
Hydorn was elected a justice of the peace in and for the city of Grand Rapids to fill a vacancy at the last spring election in April, 1889, and entered at once upon the discharge of the duties of his office. The term of his office to which he was elected does not expire until the 4th day of July, 1892, unless his office is abolished by this act of the legislature. At the time the act was passed, taking immediate effect, there were four justices of the peace in the city of Grand Rapids duly elected and qualified, and performing the duties of their offices. They were in office under the law of 1881, (Pub. Acts 1881, p. 20,) although it is not disputed but the city of Grand Rapids has had at least four justices of the peace ever since such city was organized. The law makes a radical change, and legislates, if valid, not only Hydorn, but another justice, Hughes, out of office. The respondent contends that this act of the legislature is unconstitutional and void, and that the old law remains. A justice of the peace is a constitutional officer and an elective one, and it is claimed that there must be four in each township, and at least as many as that number in the cities of this state. Section 17, art. 6, of the constitution reads as follows:
There has always been, under the constitution, four justices provided by law for each township, and the term of years of the office, and the provision for classification of the terms at the first election, tends to support the theory that it was intended by the constitution that there should be four justices in each township, and, if that were so, the clause in relation to the number in cities would, in its language, by granting the power of increase to the legislature, impliedly withhold the authority to decrease. But the constitution strictly, by its terms, does not provide that there must be four justices in a township, but that there shall be justices not exceeding four in number. Constitutions are, especially in examining and determining the restrictions placed upon legislatures by those instruments, strictly construed, and such a construction would permit the legislature to enact that there should be but two justices in a township, and, if so, but two in a city.
It is also contended that the legislature has no power to abolish or shorten the term of the office of a justice of the peace after such officer has been elected and qualified. The constitution provides that they shall hold their offices for four years, and that a justice elected to fill a vacancy, as was the respondent, shall hold his office for the residue of his unexpired term. It is insisted in respondent's behalf that these provisions expressly prohibit the legislature from interfering with or abolishing his term of office; that even if it be conceded that the power exists in that body to change the number of justices in Grand Rapids from four to two, still the legislature has no authority to determine that the respondent's term shall end before the period of its determination as the law existed when he was elected and qualified.
We do not, in the view we take of this act, consider it necessary to determine whether or not the legislature can decrease the number of justices in Grand Rapids to two, or whether, in case this could be done, the term of respondent could be shortened or abolished.
It is also objected that the act is void because it conflicts in two particulars with section 20, art. 4, of the constitution- First, because there is more than one object expressed in the title; and, secondly, because the title does not indicate the object of the act as expressed in the...
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