State ex rel. Leche v. Fowler

• Decision Date: 01 April 1889
• Docket Number: 10,269
• Citation: 6 So. 602,41 La.Ann. 380
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: THE STATE EX REL. GERVAIS LECHE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, v. AUGUSTUS FOWLER

6 So. 602

41 La.Ann. 380

THE STATE EX REL. GERVAIS LECHE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, v. AUGUSTUS FOWLER

No. 10,269

Supreme Court of Louisiana

April 1, 1889

APPEAL from the Twenty-Sixth District Court, Parish of Jefferson. Rost, J.

Walter H. Rogers, Attorney General, Gervais Leche, District Attorney, and A. E. Billings, for the Relator and Appellant.

H. N Gautier, Mott, Drolla & Augustin, and F. S. Drolla, for the Respondent and Appellee.

MCENERY J. POCHE, J.

OPINION

MCENERY, J.

ON MOTION TO DISMISS.

The ground of the motion is that this Court is without jurisdiction ratione materiae, because the relator, who is appellant, has no appealable interest in the controversy.

The suit involves the right of the defendant and appellee to the office of coroner of the parish of Jefferson, the fees and emoluments of which are alleged to exceed the sum of two thousand dollars in value, and the record contains an admission to that effect by the appellee.

It is therefore undeniable, and it is not contested, that if cast in the suit the defendant would have had a right of appeal to this Court.

It is a settled practice in our jurisprudence that if one of the parties in the controversy has an appealable interest at issue, the other party is ipso facto vested with the same right. State ex rel. Nichols, Governor, vs. Mayor, recently decided. Handy vs. New Orleans, 39 Ann. 107; Ready vs. New Orleans, 27 Ann. 169; State ex rel. vs. Judge, 23 Ann. 595; State ex rel. Murtagh, vs. Judge, 23 Ann. 761.

The motion to dismiss is therefore denied at appellee's costs.

ON THE MERITS.

McENERY J. The relator asks for the removal of the defendant from the office of coroner for the parish of Jefferson because he is not a citizen of Louisiana and is therefore ineligible.

The defendant was elected to the office of coroner at the last general State election. He has all the qualifications of an elector prescribed by Art. 185 of the State Constitution.

Previous to his election he had declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States, but he has never been naturalized. For this reason it is urged he is not a citizen of the United States, and therefore not a citizen of the State.

A person who is a citizen of the United States is necessarily a citizen of the particular State in which he resides. But a person may be a citizen of a particular State and not a citizen of the United States. To hold otherwise would be to deny to the State the highest exercise of its sovereignty, the right to declare who are its citizens.

The sovereignty of the citizens of a republic has its highest assertion in representative government, and is constituted in its political order in the representation of persons, and not of classes or of interests. In the realization of this sovereignty of the people, its expression is obtained through some law regulative of political action by which the will of the people can be obtained. This is done through the instrumentality of qualified electors who, in the exercise of a free will assert in conformity to that law the determination of the civil and political organization in which is manifested the will of the people....