Longenecker v. Nelson

• Decision Date: 12 June 1890
• Citation: 27 N.E. 217,133 Ill. 565
• Parties: PEOPLE ex. rel. LONGENECKER, State's Attorney, v. NELSON et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

133 Ill. 565

27 N.E. 217

PEOPLE ex. rel. LONGENECKER, State's Attorney,

v.NELSON et al.¹

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 12, 1890.

Appeal from circuit court, Cook county; JULIUS S. GRINNELL, Judge.

Information in the nature of a quo warranto against Murray Nelson, John A. King, Richard Prendergast, Frank Wenter, William H. Russell, Arnold P. Gilmore, John J. Altpeter, and Henry J. Willing, to compel them to show by what warrant they claim to enjoy and exercise the office of trustees of the Sanitary District of Chicago. Respondents obtained judgment upon demurrer to their plea, and the people appeal.

MAGRUDER, J., dissenting.

Geo. Hunt, Atty. Gen., ( G. S. Eldredge, of counsel,) for appellant.

S. S. Gregory and Wilson & Moore, for appellees.

Geo. M. Harris and W. T. Burgess, amici curiae.

BAILEY, J.

By the averments of their plea, the truth of which is admitted by the demurrer, the defendants have established their title to the office which the information charges them with having usurped, unless the act under which the Sanitary District of Chicago is organized (Rev. St. 1889, c. 24, §§ 343-369) is so far unconstitutional as to render the organization of said district and the election of its trustees inoperative and void. This seems to be admitted by counsel, since the only questions presented by them for our consideration are those which involve the validity of said act. Counsel for the prosecution insist that the act as a whole, and in various of its subordinate provisions, contravenes the constitution of the state, but, as this proceeding involves the single question of the defendants' title to the office which they are charged with having usurped, no objections to the act need be considered except those which go to the validity of the organization of the district and of the election of its trustees. The various grounds upon which the constitutionality of the act is assailed may be summarized as follows: (1) That the title of the act expresses and the act embraces more than one subject; (2) that the act embraces various subjects, which are not expressed in the title; (3) that the act is a local or special act; (4) that it provides for cumulative voting at the elections of the trustees of the sanitary districts organized under it; (5) that in providing the machinery for the organization of sanitary districts the act imposes upon the judge of the county court and two judges of the circuit court duties which are incompatible with their duties and functions as judges of those courts; (6) that the act is an evasion of the constitutional provision which limits the indebtedness which a municipal corporation shall be allowed to incur in any manner and for any purpose to 5 per centum of the value of the taxable property therein; (7) that the municipal authorities of sanitary districts are vested with the power of general taxation, and are not limited to special assessments upon the property benefited for the payment of the drainage system which they are authorized to construct.

Of these propositions the third, sixth, and seventh are sufficiently considered in Wilson v. Board, ante, 203, and we do not deem it necessary to add anything here to what we there said. In that case held that upon neither of these grounds can said act be declared unconstitutional, and in support of that conclusion we need now only refer to the opinion there filed.

The first two of the grounds above mentioned upon which the constitutionality of said act is assailed are based upon the following provision of section 13, art. 4, of the constitution of 1870, viz.: ‘No act hereafter passed shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title. But if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be so expressed.’ Formerly the title to an act was considered no part of it, and, although it might be looked to as a guide to the intent of the law-makers when the body of the statute appeared to be in any respect ambiguous or doubtful, yet it could not enlarge or restrain the provisions of the act itself, and the latter might therefore be good when that and the title were in conflict. Nor was there any rule forbidding the incorporation into the same act of as many different subjects as the legislature might see fit, entirely regardless of whether they bore any logical relation to each other or not. While these rules prevailed, the enactment of laws became subject to very serious abuses. These, in the main, consisted- First, of incorporating into the same bill various measures having no proper relation to each other, so as to enlist in favor of the bill support which neither measure singly could obtain on its own merits. This resulted in a species of ‘log-rolling’ legislation which was both corruptive of the legislature and dangerous to the state. In the second place, titles were often prefixed to bills which were inadequate or misleading, or which afforded no intimation whatever of the true nature of the measure proposed; thus deceiving the members of the legislature and the public. That these were serious evils cannot be doubted, nor can we doubt the wisdom of those constitutional provisions which have been adopted for their correction. But while these provisions should be so construed as to put an end to legislation of the vicious character above referred to, it is not their design to embarrass legislation by making laws unnecessarily restrictive in their scope and operation. People v. Mahaney, 13 Mich. 481. Their general purpose is accomplished when a law has but one general object, which is fairly indicated by its title. The generality of a title is therefore no objection to it, so long as it is not made to cover legislation incongruous in itself, and which by no fair intendment can be considered as having a necessary or proper connection. The legislature must determine for itself how broad and comprehensive shall be the object of a statute, and how much particularity shall be employed in the title defining it. Cooley, Const. Lim. (5th Ed.) 174. It should be remembered in this connection that every presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute. It follows that every reasonable doubt must be resolved in favor of the action of the legislature, and that, where such doubt exists, the statute must be sustained. Id. 218, and authorities cited in notes. As said by Chief Justice SHAW in Re Wellington, 16 Pick. 87: ‘When called upon to pronounce the invalidity of an act of legislation passed with all the forms and solemnities requisite to give it the force of law, courts will approach the question with great caution, examine it in every possible aspect, and ponder upon it as long as deliberation and patient attention can throw and new light on the subject, and never declare a statute void unless the nullity and invalidity of the act are placed, in their judgment, beyond reasonable doubt.’ In Railroad Co. v. Casey, 26 Pa. St. 287, and again in Powell v. Com., 114 Pa. St. 265, 7 Atl. Rep. 913, the supreme court of Pennsylvania lays down the same doctrine in the following language: ‘The right of the judiciary to declare a statute void, and to arrest its execution, is one which, in the opinion of all courts, is coupled with responsibilities so grave that it is never to be exercised except in very clear cases. One department is bound to presume that another has acted rightly. The party who wishes to pronounce a law unconstitutional takes upon himself the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that it is so.’ The foregoing is familiar law, and has frequently been announced as such by this court. Railroad Co. v. Smith, 62 Ill. 268;Hawthorn v. People, 109 Ill. 302;People v. Hazelwood, 116 Ill. 319, 6 N. E. Rep. 480; Wulff v. Aldrich, 124 Ill. 591, 16 N. E. Rep. 886; Field v. People, 2 Scam. 79;Lane v. Dorman, 3 Scam. 238;People v. Marshall, 1 Gilman, 672;People v. Reynolds, 5 Gilman, 1. Akin to the principles above stated, or following as a legitimate corollary therefrom, is the further rule that, whenever an act of the legislature can be so construed and applied as to avoid a conflict with the constitution and give it force of law, such construction will be adopted. Newland v. Marsh, 19 Ill. 376;Bigelow v. Railroad Co., 27 Wis. 478;Attorney General v. Eau Claire, 37 Wis. 400;Dow v. Norris, 4 N. H. 16;People v. Supervisors, 17 N. Y. 235.

The relator, as we have already seen, in alleging that the act in question contravenes the clause of the constitution which provides that no act shall embrace more than one subject, and that such subject shall be expressed in the title, presents two propositions: First, that both the act and the title embrace more than one subject; and, second, that the act embraces various subjects, which are not expressed in the title. These propositions must be considered separately, since it is manifest that sustaining the first would involve very different legal consequences from those which would follow if the second only should be sustained. If the act embraces two subjects, and both are expressed in the title, the entire act must be declared void, as in that case the proviso that if any subject is embraced in the act which is not expressed in the title the act shall be void only as to so much as is not so expressed can have no application. If two subjects are both embraced in the act and expressed in the title, we cannot elect between them so as to preserve one and reject the other, but the entire act must fall by reason of being in contravention of the constitutional limitation. If the objection, however, is only that the act embraces several subjects, of which but one is expressed in the title, the subjects not expressed may be rejected, and the act, so far as it relates to the subject expressed in the title, may be held to be valid. As we have said, the generality of the subject...