People ex rel. Campbell v. Clark

• Decision Date: 01 April 1851
• Citation: 1 Cal. 406
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: THE PEOPLE EX REL. ALEXANDER CAMPBELL v. CLARK.

1 Cal. 406

THE PEOPLE EX REL. ALEXANDER CAMPBELL v. CLARK.

Supreme Court of the State of California

April Term, 1851

April 1, 1851

APPEAL from the District Court of the District of San Francisco. The facts of the case were substantially as follows:

The defendant was regularly elected County Judge of the County of San Francisco, at an election regularly appointed and held in that county. On the day on which the election was held, the Legislature, then in session, passed an Act repealing the Act by virtue of which such election was held, and conferred upon the Governor the power to appoint the County Judge. This repealing Act was approved by the Governor on the same day, but at what hour of the day did not appear. Some days after the election was over, the Governor appointed the relator County Judge. Both parties claiming the office, and both assuming to perform the duties of it, the relator filed a complaint in the District Court in the nature of a quo warranto, and the cause was heard in the District Court upon an agreed statement of facts. Judgment was there given in favor of the relator, and an appeal then taken to this Court.

James A. McDougall (Attorney-General), for the Relator.

Edward Norton, for Defendant.

By the Court, HASTINGS, Ch. J. Such is the unorganized condition of the County Court of the County of San Francisco, that the immediate action of this Court is required, and no opinion therefore has been prepared reviewing the numerous and conflicting authorities cited, and the arguments of counsel.

The right to the office claimed by the appellant by virtue of an election by the people, ought to be viewed favorably and not to be thwarted by any implication or fiction in the computation of time. The doctrine that a statute, by relation, was in force from the first day of parliament, and that the entire term of a Court was but one day, and that judgments were to be considered as rendered on the first natural day of the term, has never been permitted to obtain in the Courts of the United States, to the prejudice of the rights of the citizen or the public. If no time be specified when a statute shall be in force, it ought to go into effect from and after its passage, that is, from and after the point of time when its existence is perfected. This "rule is deemed to be fixed beyond the power of judicial control, and no time is allowed for the publication of the law before it operates, when the statute itself gives no time." (1 Kent's Comm. 457.) The general rule seems to be, that in the computation of time from an act done, the day of the act is to be computed, although in the computation from and after a day specified, the day shall be excluded.

To hold that a law operates all that part of the day of its passage prior thereto, is as absurd and as much of a fiction as the old doctrine that, by relation, it should commence running on the first day of the parliament. And...