Commonwealth ex rel. Margiotti v. Lawrence

• Citation: 326 Pa. 526,193 A. 46
• Decision Date: 25 June 1937
• Docket Number: 3
• Parties: Commonwealth ex rel. Margiotti v. Lawrence et al
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

193 A. 46

Commonwealth ex rel. Margiotti v. Lawrence et al

326 Pa. 526

No. 3

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

June 25, 1937

Argued June 7, 1937

Appeal, No. 3, May T., 1938. Special certiorari issued to C.P. Dauphin Co., Commonwealth Docket No. 38, 1937, removing record to Supreme Court for immediate consideration, in case of Commonwealth ex rel. Charles J. Margiotti, Attorney General, sur petition of John B. Kelly, a taxpayer, v. David L. Lawrence, Secretary of Commonwealth et al., intervening defendants. Mandamus proceeding. Order entered directing that a peremptory writ be issued as prayed for.

Thomas B. K. Ringe, with him Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, for plaintiff.

Edward Friedman, Deputy Attorney General, with him Charles J Margiotti, Attorney General, for Commonwealth.

John Y Scott, Deputy Attorney General, for defendant.

William T. Connor, with him John H. Maurer, for intervening defendants.

Before KEPHART, C.J., SCHAFFER, MAXEY, DREW, LINN, STERN and BARNES, JJ.

OPINION

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE KEPHART:

The case comes before this court on a special writ of certiorari, removing the record from the Common Pleas Court of Dauphin County. It is a mandamus proceeding instituted by John B. Kelly, a taxpayer of the County of Philadelphia and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with the consent of the Attorney General, to compel the Secretary of the Commonwealth to comply with the provisions of the Act of May 6, 1937, No. 139, and to advertise a proposed amendment to Article XIV of the Constitution of Pennsylvania permitting the consolidation of the City and County governments of Philadelphia. No amendment to this article has been submitted to the people since 1909, and the subject matter of the suggested constitutional revision has never been submitted as an amendment. Counsel for the Secretary of the Commonwealth moved the court below to quash the writ that had been issued on the petition for mandamus. The district attorney, recorder of deeds, sheriff, clerk of the court of Quarter Sessions, and two of the three County Commissioners of that county were granted leave by this court to intervene as parties defendant, and they also moved to quash the writ.

The short time available for publication of the proposed amendment prior to the election of 1937, as required under the law, made imperative a speedy determination by this court of the question involved. The sole contention raised in the motions to quash is that the provisions of Article XVIII ^[*] prohibit the submission of the proposed amendment, because other amendments to the Constitution were submitted to the electors in 1933, less than five years from the election to be held this Fall. The question briefly stated is: May the Constitution be amended oftener than once in five years?

Armstrong v. King, 281 Pa. 207, is relied upon as holding that Article XVIII is a "time-lock" on the Constitution, which, it is said, provides that at least five years must intervene between amendments, and no amendment may be voted on in that interval. That case considered a proposed amendment dealing with the same article and section of the Constitution as one adopted the previous year. Both amendments related to the same subject matter, and, in a measure at least, they conflicted, in that the first changed the existing language so as to increase the debt limit for highway purposes from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000, while the second proposed to make the section read as it had before the first amendment, and to add thereto language permitting the borrowing of an additional $35,000,000 for bonus purposes. The court below held that the "time-lock" provision did not prevent the submission of the second amendment. In the appeal to this Court, counsel did not contend that this provision of the Constitution goes so far as to prevent the submission of any amendment or amendments oftener than once in five years, or that all amendments must be submitted in series of five-year intervals; nor did they contend that the same section of the Constitution could not be amended oftener than once in five years. They did contend, however, that a fair and logical interpretation of the language used is that the same subject matter should not be dealt with by amendment until a lapse of five years. In considering the prohibitory provision this Court stated that amendments could not be submitted oftener than once in five years.

We are asked to reconsider the conclusion reached, the contention being that the facts in the case did not justify the broad ruling, which was therefore obiter dictum (Com. v. Shawell, 325 Pa. 497, 503; Frick's Estate, 277 Pa. 242, 252), and that Article XVIII was not intended to prohibit the submission of any and all amendments oftener than five years after an amendment had been submitted. While the Constitution is the basic law of our social and legal existence as a State, and, as such, is entitled to the highest respect and fullest obedience by a free people, nevertheless, as the instrument is the people's law, made by them, they should be given free opportunity to modify it as they may see fit within the rules fixed by the Constitution, given a reasonable construction. Even if the ruling in the Armstrong case was justified on the facts, we cannot consider it in the line of cases which fix rights of property, or determine issues involving the status of individuals or persons, requiring the application of stare decisis. No better authority need be quoted on this than the words of the Justice who wrote the Armstrong opinion: "Moreover, stare decisis has no real place in constitutional law when the validity of another statute is under consideration": Heisler v. Thomas Colliery Co., 274 Pa. 448. This court did not hesitate in that case and another case, the opinion of which was also written by Justice SIMPSON, to reverse a prior decision made a few years before, under which property rights of vast value had become vested. See Greene County v. Southern Surety Co., 292 Pa. 304, reversed in Commonwealth v. Great American Indemnity Co., 312 Pa. 183.

In Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, (8th ed. 1927), Vol. 1, page 121, notes, it is stated: ". . . when a question involving important public or private rights, extending through all coming time, has been passed upon on a single occasion, and which decision can in no just sense be said to have been acquiesced in, it is not only the right, but the duty, of the court, when properly called upon, to re-examine the questions involved, and again subject them to judicial scrutiny. We are by no means unmindful of the salutary tendency of the rule stare decisis, but at the same time we cannot be unmindful of the lessons furnished by our own consciousness, as well as by judicial history, of the liability to error and the advantages of review." This old and well-established rule has been recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in the recent case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 57 S.Ct. 578, 81 L.Ed. 455, and our own court in Kelley v. Earle, 325 Pa. 337, reexamined a former opinion in the light of new facts. We do not hesitate to reconsider the meaning of Article XVIII, as it was clearly not the intent and purpose of the framers of the Constitution to place a complete barrier to its amendment oftener than once every five years; nor does the restrictive clause justify the rigid contention placed on it some ten years ago. To continue to uphold this unwarranted conclusion would paralyze the machinery of government and make impossible much needed changes. It would be harsh to impute to the people an intent by their own act to erect an instrument preventive of meritorious revisions in their fundamental law until the mischief that could be remedied has completed its destroying work.

The clause of the Constitution involved here, and in the Armstrong case, is a proviso, the office of which is to qualify, restrain or otherwise modify the general language of an enabling provision. A proviso is to be strictly construed (U.S. v. Dickson, 40 U.S. 141, 164; Ryan v. Carter, 93 U.S. 78, 83); it has no existence separate and apart from the provision which it is designed to limit or qualify. This is a common sense rule, applicable to the interpretation of any written instrument; it governs the construction of constitutional provisions as well as statutes: Montgomery v. Martin, 294 Pa. 25, 32; Lancaster v. Public Service Commission, 120 Pa.Super. 597, 602. The interpretation placed upon this clause in the Armstrong case is incompatible with this rule of strict construction.

The constitutional debates of 1873 were quoted to sustain that case. See 5 Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1873, pp. 9-14. Such statements must be understood to be merely the personal opinion of individual members of the Convention. What the Convention adopted and what the electors of the Commonwealth accepted, is the Constitution as it is written, and its clear meaning cannot be distorted to fit the views of those particular delegates. It must be assumed that the people who voted upon the Constitution gave to the words employed their common and ordinary significance. Justice PAXSON in Commonwealth v. Balph, 111 Pa. 365, pointed this out forcefully at p. 380: "In the consideration and discussion of this section of the Constitution I throw out of view the copious citations which have been furnished us from the debates in the convention. They are of value as showing the views of individual members, and as indicating the reasons for their votes. But they give us no light as to the views of the large majority who did not talk; much less of the mass of our fellow citizens whose votes at the polls gave that instrument the force of fundamental law. We think it safe to construe ...