Griffin v. State, ex rel. Griffiths

• Decision Date: 27 June 1889
• Docket Number: 14,974
• Citation: 22 N.E. 7,119 Ind. 520
• Parties: Griffin, Secretary of State, v. The State, ex rel. Griffiths, Reporter of Supreme Court
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

22 N.E. 7

119 Ind. 520

Griffin, Secretary of State, v. The State, ex rel. Griffiths, Reporter of Supreme Court

No. 14,974

Supreme Court of Indiana

June 27, 1889

From the Marion Circuit Court.

Judgment affirmed.

J. L McMaster and A. Boice, for appellant.

L. T Michener, Attorney General, V. G. Clifford, W. F. Browder, S Claypool, W. A. Ketcham and A. F. Potts, for appellee.

OPINION

Elliott, C. J.

The question which this record presents may be thus stated: Shall the secretary of state accept five hundred copies of volume 117 of the Indiana reports under the laws enacted prior to March 4th, 1889, or must he receive them from the reporter under the act of March 4th, 1889? It is our judgment that the act of March 4th, 1889, is entirely destitute of validity, and that the secretary of state must proceed under the statutes enacted prior to its passage.

It is quite clear that the act of March 4th, 1889, assumes to create an entire new system, and that the essential feature attempted to be introduced by it is in violation of the Constitution and carries down the whole act. Elliott's Supp., sections 1824-1836. It assumes to change the former system by imposing upon the judges of the Supreme Court the duty of preparing the syllabi, and this is the keystone of the entire system it proposes to create. The removal of this keystone, like the removal of the keystone of an arch, causes the whole to crumble and fall. It is impossible to enforce the act without judicial legislation, since reports without syllabi are unknown to the law, and it can not be rationally conceived that the Legislature intended to provide for a system of reporting with this essential and indispensable feature absent. The error of the Legislature consists in assuming that the duty of preparing the head-notes can be imposed upon the judges. Ex Parte Griffiths, 118 Ind. 83, 20 N.E. 513. This error pervades and poisons the whole act and causes its entire invalidity. We think it is beyond controversy that a system resting on a radical and fundamental error must fail.

The provision of the act assuming to compel the judges to prepare the syllabi is so interlocked and blended with the other provisions as to make a separation impossible. We understand it to be firmly established that where a separation can not be made, and the invalid provision completely detached and treated as independent, the whole act must be pronounced void. If the purpose of an act "is to accomplish a single object only, and some of its provisions are void, the whole must fail unless sufficient remains to effect the object without the aid of the invalid portion. And if they are so mutually connected with and dependent on each other, as conditions, considerations, or compensations for each other, as to warrant the belief that the Legislature in-intended them as a whole, and if all could not be carried into effect the Legislature would not pass the residue independently, then if some parts are unconstitutional, all the provisions which are thus dependent, conditional, or connected must fall with them." Cooley Const. Lim. 213. In Meshmeier v. State, 11 Ind. 482, Worden J., in delivering the opinion of the court, said: "But it would seem that the provisions of the statute held to be constitutional, should be substantially the same, when considered by themselves, as when taken in connection with other parts of the statute held to be unconstitutional; or, in other words, where that part of a statute which is unconstitutional, so limits and qualifies the remaining portion, that the latter, when stripped of such unconstitutional provisions, is essentially different, in its effect and operation, from what it would be were the whole law valid, it would seem that the whole law shall fall. The remaining portion of the statute, when thus stripped of its limitations and qualifications, can not have the force of law, because it is not an expression of the legislative will. The Legislature pass an entire statute, on the supposition, of course, that it is all valid, and to take effect. The courts find some of its essential elements in conflict with the Constitution, strip it of those elements, and leave the remaining portion mutilated and transformed into a different thing from what it was when it left the hands of the Legislature. The statute thus emasculated, is not the creature of the Legislature; and it would be an act of legislation on the part of the courts, to put it in force. The courts have no right thus to usurp the province of the Legislature." The general rule stated by Judge Cooley is approved...