People ex rel. Bockes v. Wemple

• Decision Date: 08 October 1889
• Citation: 115 N.Y. 302,22 N.E. 272
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. BOCKES v. WEMPLE, Comptroller.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

115 N.Y. 302

22 N.E. 272

PEOPLE ex rel. BOCKES

v.WEMPLE, Comptroller.¹

Court of Appeals of New York.

Oct. 8, 1889.

Appeal from supreme court, general term, third department.

Application by Augustus Bockes for mandamus to Edward Wemple, comptroller, to compel respondent to pay a certain claim to relator. The writ was denied, the order affirmed at general term, and relator appeals.

ANDREWS, J., dissenting.

Esek. Cowen, for appellant.

L. S. Westbrook, for respondent.

GRAY, J.

The relator held the office of justice of the supreme court of this state from January 1, 1860, continuously, until January 1, 1888, by virtue of three elections. His last election to the office was for the term of 14 years, commencing January 1, 1876. That term was abridged by two years by the relator attaining the age of 70, in 1887. During the last years of his incumbency of the office he was paid the sum of $7,200 per annum, in quarter-yearly payments, but since its termination the state authorities have declined to pay him otherwise than at the rate of $6,000 per annum. The relator has sought, through these proceedings, to establish his right to the receipt of that full measure of compensation of which he was in receipt while in office. The determination of the issue lies in the proper construction to be given to those laws of the state which provide as to the compensation of supreme court justices, and to that portion of the constitution of the state which continues their compensation to them upon the abridgment of their term of office by limitation of age. Chapter 408 of the Laws of 1870, in its ninth section, provides as follows, viz.: ‘The justices of the supreme court shall receive an annual compensation of $6,000 each, payable quarterly, in lieu of all other compensation, except that they shall receive, in addition to such stated salaries, a per diem allowance of five dollars per day for their reasonable expenses, when absent from their homes, and engaged in holding any general or special terms, circuit court, or court of oyer and terminer, or in attending any convention, as hereinafter provided, to revise the rules of said court.’ The legislature, in 1872, (by chapter 541 of the Laws of that year, § 1,) in part abrogated these provisions and enacted as follows, viz.: ‘The said justices of the supreme court, except in the first judicial district, shall receive the sum of $1,200 annually, from the 1st day of January, 1872, in lieu of and in full of all expenses now allowed by law. This subdivision shall not increase the pay of any judge except the justices of the supreme court.’ These provisions of the law being in force, with respect to the compensation of supreme court justices, in the year 1880, the thirteenth section of article 6 of the constitution was amended. The section as amended, so far as is material to our consideration here, reads as follows, viz.: ‘The official terms of the said justices * * * who shall be elected after the adoption of this article shall be fourteen years from and including the first day of January next after their election. But no person shall hold the office of justice or judge of any court longer than until and including the last day of December next after he shall be seventy years of age. The compensation of every * * * justice of the supreme court whose term of office shall be abridged pursuant to this provision, and who shall have served as such * * * justice ten years or more, shall be continued during the remainder of the term for which he was elected.’

The one question, therefore, which is to be answered, is: What is the ‘compensation’ which is to be ‘continued’ to the justice, in the event mentioned in the constitution? The comptroller argues that it must be understood to be that portion of the justice's compensation which represented an award for services, and not that additional portion which originated in a grant of an additional sum annually in lieu of expenses theretofore allowed by law. This argument is based in part upon a reasoning upon the supposed intention of the legislature, and in part upon the phraseology of the yearly appropriation acts of that body, which fixed the amount to be paid for ‘salaries and expenses.’ In so far as the position of the comptroller rests upon subsequent legislative enactments a furnishing evidence of the original legislative intention, I think it is unsound, and quite untenable. I fail to understand how the legislative act of appropriating sums of money for the support of government can furnish any evidence of the intention with which some previous act was passed, which fixed the amount or mode of payment of an official's compensation. The legislature is not vested with judicial functions; and when it is claimed that the purpose of an act is obscure, and that the obscurity is dispelled by referring to other acts in pari materia, at least they should be demonstrative of the legislative sense. When it is claimed that an act furnishes some evidence as to the legislative intention in some previous enactment, we should be able to infer clearly that in its passage the legislative body had in mind the previous act, and the particular object aimed at in enacting it. But in passing acts appropriating moneys for the support of government, how can we infer any other dominant or present idea or purpose than the mere determination and appropriation of the amounts needed for each official channel? Can we reasonably suppose that any ideas of construction of language, or that the particular object of a previous act, the existence of which creates a demand for an appropriation of moneys, are present in the legislators' minds? I think not. It is an elementary rule that statutes are to be interpreted according to their intent. The intention of the legislature is undoubtedly the great principle which controls in the office of interpretation; but, as Chancellor Kent says, in his Commentaries (volume 1, p. 462:) ‘The words of a statute, if of common use, are to be taken in their natural, plain, obvious, and ordinary signification.’ It is only where the literal acceptation of the words used will work a mischief, or some absurd result, or where some obscurity in the sense compels it, that we need resort to extrinsic aids of interpretation. The intent of the legislature is to be sought primarily in the words used, and, if they are free from ambiguity, there is no occasion to search elsewhere for their meaning. As it was said in McCluskey v. Crom well, 11 N. Y. 593: ‘It is not allowable to interpret what has no need of interpretation, and, when the words have a definite and precise meaning, to go elsewhere in search of conjecture, in order to restrict or extend the meaning.’ The natural and obvious meaning should be taken ‘without resorting to subtle and forced construction.’

The rules which apply in the construction of statutes apply equally in reading a constitution. Newell v. People, 7 N. Y. 97. In that case JOHNSON, J., said: ‘Whether we are considering an agreement between parties, a statute, or a constitution, with a view to its interpretation, the thing we are to seek is the thought which it expresses. * * * If * * * the words embody a definite meaning, which involves no absurdity, * * * then that meaning apparent upon the face of the instrument is the one which alone we are at liberty to say was intended to be conveyed. * * * It must be very plain, nay, absolutely certain, that the people did not intend what the language they have employed, in its natural signification, imports, before a court will feel itself at liberty to depart from the plain reading of a constitutional provision.’ The learned judge found warrant for his expressions in the language of Chief Justice MARSHALL, in Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 188, and of BRONSON, J., in People v. Purdy, 2 Hill, 31, and 4 Hill, 384, in which cases provisions of the constitutions of the United States and of this state, respectively, were the subjects of interpretation. The reading of text-books and of reported decisions, however, only serves to confirm in the mind the view that where language is explicit we should not allow ourselves to lose sight of its plain meaning, and to wander in the mazes of conjecture. Whether the excursion into the ways of speculation be invited by the natural habit of thought or by the dictates of considerations personal in their bearing and influence, it is dangerous to indulge in it, when we are reading the plain and unambiguous language in which the people have framed their will.

Is there any ambiguity or doubtful meaning about the language and words of the constitution in question? What is the reasonable doubt, which a fair mind will or can entertain as to the import of the provisions that ‘the compensation of every justice, whose term of office shall be abridged pursuant to this provision, and who shall have served as such justice ten years or more, shall be continued during the remainder of the term for which he was elected?’ The language is general. It says that ‘the compensation’ shall be continued. It does not say ‘compensation for services;’ and in fact it would have been impossible to convey by the use of that word any sense of restriction or of deprivation, for the compensation was as well for service on the bench, as for what his duties and office entailed upon him off of the bench. The word ‘compensation’ means, and, I think, obviously means, the sum of money which the judicial officer had been in receipt of from the state when his term of office was abridged. In the law of 1870, which gave a per diem allowance for reasonable expenses, etc., that payment even was regarded as in the nature of compensation to the justice; for the language used was that the $6,000 a year was ‘in lieu of all other compensation, except that they shall receive in addition to such stated salary a per diem allowance,’ etc. The effect of the use of the word ‘except,’ in connection with...