State v. Blake

• Citation: 29 A. 417,57 N.J.L. 6
• Parties: STATE ex rel. ALLISON v. BLAKE, Road Commissioner.
• Decision Date: 11 June 1894
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

29 A. 417

57 N.J.L. 6

STATE ex rel. ALLISON

v. BLAKE, Road Commissioner.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

June 11, 1894.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

On information in the nature of a quo warranto.

Action by the state, on the relation of one Allison, to test title to office of one Blake, road commissioner. Judgment for relator.

Argued at February term, before BEASLEY, C. J., and DIXON, REED, and MAGIE, JJ.

George R. Dutton, for relator. William M. Johnson and Jos. D. Bedle, for defendant.

BEASLEY, C. J. This is a procedure to test the title of the defendant to the office of road commissioner in the first district of Englewood township. The title thus challenged is claimed to exist by virtue of an election held under the act entitled "An act concerning public roads and parks, and creating boards for the control and management of the same," approved March 1, 1893 (Pamph. Laws 1893, p. 69). The main object of this statute is to supersede, by the introduction of new methods, the system theretofore prevailing for the formation and reparation of the public highways by the well-known township officials. The fashion of this substitute is this: the township committee of the several townships of the state are required to divide "their respective townships into convenient road districts," and thereupon to "call an assembly in each of said districts" "of the freeholders of said district," upon a certain prescribed notice. The section of the act containing these directions then proceeds in these words, viz.: "At which assembly, after being organized, the said freeholders so assembled shall elect by ballot a suitable person, who shall be a legal voter in the township and a freeholder and resident in the district for which he is nominated, as a road commissioner for said district for the town of three years." The further provision is that the commissioners thus chosen shall be known as the "Public Road Board;" that they shall each take an oath of office, and a certain compensation shall be paid to them by the township collector; that they shall have the "same duties and be subject to the same penalties as overseers of the highways in the said township now have or heretofore had," and, in addition, "shall have the same powers, perform the same duties, and be subject to the same obligations and penalties as the township committee now have, had, perform or performed, or are or were subject to, in relation to the public highways, and in addition thereto shall have a general and exclusive supervision, control and management of the public highways and sidewalks in said township," etc. Besides the powers thus specified, there are others, of a similar character, conferred upon this newly-created road board. It appears by the record before the court that, in pursuance of the statute in question, the township of Englewood was divided into five road districts, and that in No. 1 of these the defendant was declared elected a commissioner, and is now in the execution of the functions of such office. The legality of this election is the question to be resolved.

It will be perceived, from the outline of the act as above given, that the elective franchise, in these particular cases, is conferred exclusively upon "the freeholders in said district." At the election now under consideration, the chairman of the assembly ruled that all persons of full age, whether men or women, who resided in the township of Englewood, and who owned lands in said district, should be permitted to vote, and all other persons should be excluded from voting. The supervenient inquiry arising from an election so conducted is, obviously, whether the legislature has the power to vest in a special class of persons the right to fill the office with which we are now concerned. The act explicitly declares that no vote can be given except by a freeholder of the district By article 2, § 1, of the constitution of the state, the right of suffrage is thus defined: "Every male citizen of the United States of the age of twenty-one years, who shall have been a resident of this state one year, and of the county in which he claims his vote five months, next before the election, shall be entitled to vote for all officers that now are, or hereafter may be, elective by the people." With the exceptions enumerated in the proviso we have, at present, no concern. It cannot be denied that the office now in question falls within the terms of this constitutional definition, for it is plainly an office elective by the people. Notwithstanding the universality...