Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-03-18
LOOKS LIKE A PRIZE PUZZLE.

Now that We have got the decisions which
were TO make the way clear for the city, it
becomes necessary to retain a large corps of
Philadelphia lawyers. including the Su-
preme Court Justices, to construe the de-
cislons. Besides the wide divergence of
opinion as to whether curative legislation
can enable the city to do otherwise than
what the language of the decision says it has
got to do, namely, pay for "all work done
and to be done as the law now stands"
another puzzle is presented with regard to
the effect of the decision, on heads of depart
ment and police magistrates.
The popular construction of the latest
annex to the judicial deliyerances, an
nouuced yesterday, about City Hall was
that il affrms the validity of the official
poweru ofSheads of departments and knocks
out the police justices. Yet this conclusion
can only be reached by constituting the Su-
preme Court decisions by the rule of
contraries. For the text of the de-
cision declares that the fifth, sixth
and seventh sections, creating heads
of departments and police justices, adopt
a method ''of defining the power OF newly
created officer" which 'is in violation of
the letter and spirit of the Constitution and
cannot be sustained" But the seventh Sec
ton, creating police justices, sis not as OBJ
jectionable as the fifth and sixth" creating
heads of departments The latter are saved
in measure by the grant of general powers
in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth
sections, but the police justices are also
saved by the fact that the grant of police
power is common law power, and they are
therefore permitted to exercise police pow
ers which have not been conferred on the
Mayor by statute. With the additional
fact that the court wipes out the power of
Councils to create departments by ordi-
nance, this decision leaves the heads of de-
partments in a much more parlous state
than the police justices.
If we are to take the decision to mean
what it says, it is that the heads of depart
ments cannot exert any powers established
by statute before the creation of their Offices,
and police justices cannot exercise judicial
powers vested in the Mayor bv similar en-
actments. But this construction only leaves
us in confusion worse .confounded. The
opinion itself points out that we cannot
know what powers of these municipal
depart snts are barred and what are
legal, until we get digest of all the stat
utes involved. codifed and indexed, with
marginal references on the construction of
each. Until we get this important work
done, we cannot tell, when the Department
of Public Works orders park fence built,
whether it is done under statutory authority
or by general power. The same uncertainty
extends over the act of the police justice
in sending a man for thirty days for
highly ornate drunk, whether the judicial
power exercised Is conferred on the Mayor
by statute, and therefore confined to that
functionary, or whether it comes within the
range of common law police power, and is
legal.
The irony OF this position is increased by
the fact that the work of codifcatoH and di-
gesting necessary before the departments can
know where they stand must be collection
of laws which by the decision of the court
have become invalid. The idea of codify-
ing dead-letter legislation. in order that, by