Cady v. Jardine
| Decision Date | 11 November 1937 |
| Docket Number | 12066. |
| Citation | 193 S.E. 869,185 Ga. 9 |
| Parties | CADY v. JARDINE et al. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Error from Superior Court, Coffee County; M. D. Dickerson, Judge.
Proceeding by E. Cady against J. B. Jardine and others. To review an adverse judgment, petitioner brings error.
Affirmed.
Syllabus by the Court.
Section 23 of the act approved March 26, 1937 (Ga.Laws 1937, p. 1294 et seq.), entitled 'An act to create the office of commissioner of roads and revenues in the County of Coffee,' etc., is not violative of article 3, § 7, par 8, of the Constitution of Georgia (Code, § 2-1808), which declares in part that no law shall pass that contains matter different from what is expressed in the title thereof.
T. V Williams, of Douglas, for plaintiff in error.
Mingledorff & Roberts, of Douglas, for defendants in error.
This quo warranto proceeding presents this question: Is section 23 of the act approved March 26, 1937, entitled 'An Act to create the office of Commissioner of Roads and Revenues in the County of Coffee,' etc. (Ga.Laws 1937, p. 1294 et seq.), violative of article 3, § 7, par. 8, of the Constitution of Georgia, which declares in part that no law shall pass that contains matter different from what is expressed in the title thereof. The section of the act under attack is as follows: 'James B. Jardine, of Douglas Georgia, is hereby named and appointed Commissioner of Roads and Revenues of Coffee County; and Dr. W. L. Hall, of Nicholls, and Arthur Vickers, of Ambrose, are hereby named and appointed advisors to said Commissioner and said Commissioner and said two advisors shall take office immediately after the expiration of 10 days next following the passage and approval of this Act and on their qualifying as hereinbefore provided.' The title to the act is in the following words: 'An Act to create the office of Commissioner of Roads and Revenues in the County of Coffee; to provide for the election of such Commissioner; to define his duties and powers and provide for his compensation; to provide a clerk for said Commissioner; to provide for the proper supervision of his accounts and the auditing of his books; to provide the election of two advisors; to define their duties and powers and to provide for their compensation; and for other purposes.'
The origin of the clause in the fundamental law above referred to is well known. Mayor etc. of Savannah v. State, 4 Ga. 26, 38; Howell v. State, 71 Ga. 224, 226, 51 Am.Rep. 259. It first appeared in our Constitution of 1798. Before that time no other state had such a provision. Today it appears in practically every State Constitution. McElreath on the Constitution of Georgia, § 75; 59 C.J. 792. It is distinctly a Georgia contribution to constitutional law. Wherever else it may be found it is but an echo from our own Constitution, this particular provision itself being a reverberation from a shock that may be said to have shaken this state from center to circumference. Under the caption of an act 'for the protection and support of its frontier settlement,' a measure was smuggled through the Legislature disposing of Georgia' western lands, 35,000,000 acres, for $500,000, less than two cents per acre, a territory out of which a few years later the great states of Alabama and Mississippi were carved. The burning of the records pertaining to the act, on the capitol grounds at Louisville, is one of the most dramatic incidents in our history, and furnished a scene worthy of the brush of a Raphael. Out of the rescinding act came the case of Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87, 3 L.Ed. 162, one of the outstanding landmarks of constitutional law, the first case in which the Supreme Court of the United States exercised the power to declare an act of a state Legislature unconstitutional.
Though recalling the history of the event that gave it birth, and the evil it sought to prevent, and recognizing the wisdom of the provision, it must...
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