Case Name: Felicia Toney WILLIAMS v. Alwine Mulhearn RAGLAND and Edna Bishop Brock, Clerk of the Sixth Judicial District, Parish of East Carroll, and member of the East Carroll Parish Board of Election Supervisors
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1990-09-06
Citations: 567 So. 2d 63
Docket Number: No. 90-C-1784
Parties: Felicia Toney WILLIAMS v. Alwine Mulhearn RAGLAND and Edna Bishop Brock, Clerk of the Sixth Judicial District, Parish of East Carroll, and member of the East Carroll Parish Board of Election Supervisors.
Judges: WATSON, J., concurs. See reasons assigned in dissent in Levy, 427 So.2d 844 (La.1983).
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 567
Pages: 63–69

Head Matter:
Felicia Toney WILLIAMS v. Alwine Mulhearn RAGLAND and Edna Bishop Brock, Clerk of the Sixth Judicial District, Parish of East Carroll, and member of the East Carroll Parish Board of Election Supervisors.
No. 90-C-1784.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Sept. 6, 1990.
Rehearing Denied Sept. 6, 1990.
Concurring Opinion of Justice Dennis Sept. 25, 1990.
Dissenting Opinion of Justice Lemmon Sept. 26, 1990.
M. Junior Williams, Tallulah, for Felicia Toney Williams, plaintiff-respondent.
LeRoy Smith, Tallulah, for Alwine Mulh-earn Ragland, et al., defendants-applicants.
Mack E. Barham, Robert E. Arceneaux, and Gail N. Wise, Barham Law Firm, New Orleans, for Alwine Mulhearn Ragland, et al., defendant-applicant.
Hall, J., recused.

Opinion:
SHORTESS, Justice Pro Tern.
On August 9, 1990, 567 So.2d 63, we entered judgment in this matter reversing the court of appeal and stated that reasons in support would issue in due course. Following are those reasons:
Suit was brought by Felicia Toney Williams (plaintiff), to disqualify Alwine Mulhearn Ragland (defendant) in her candidacy for re-election as judge of the Sixth Judicial District Court, Parishes of Madison, Tensas and East Carroll, on the basis of age. Defendant was born July 28, 1913, was first sworn in as a judge of the Sixth Judicial District on October 14, 1974, and has served on that court continuously since. She has served for sixteen years and is, at present, seventy-seven years old. Plaintiff is the only other candidate for the position.
Defendant took office under the Constitution of 1921, which provided, in pertinent part;
Every judge shall retire upon reaching the age of 75 years . [hjowever any judge now serving who, on attaining the age of seventy-five years, has served less than twenty years, may remain . until he has served for twenty years or until he has attained the age of eighty years, whichever shall occur first....
LSA-Const. Art. 7 § 8 (1921) (as amended by 1960 La.Acts No. 592).
The issue before us is the meaning of the words "now serving" as quoted above. Plaintiff argues that "now serving" can only mean serving in 1960, the year this language was placed in the constitution, because it was intended to preserve to those judges then in office the right, afforded under the pre-amendment language, to serve until the age of eighty. Prior to the 1960 amendment, Article 7, § 8 read, in pertinent part:
Any judge hereafter elected shall retire, and any judge presently serving shall retire, on reaching the age of eighty (80) years....
Louisiana Constitution of 1921 Art. 7 § 8 (as amended through 1955).
Plaintiff cites Giepert v. Wingerter, 531 So.2d 754 (La.1988) as dispositive of the issue. In Giepert we were presented with the question whether the mandatory retirement provision of the 1974 Constitution (70 years) would apply to a judge who first assumed office under the Constitution of 1921. We determined that the retirement provisions of the constitution under which judicial office was first assumed were controlling. Id. at 756. We based this decision on the proviso in the 1974 Constitution which preserved the "retirement benefits and judicial service rights" of those judges in office upon its effective date (January 1, 1975). Id., citing LSA-Const. Art. 5 § 23. Plaintiff relies on dicta in Giepert which suggests that the language "now serving," at present, actually means "then serving." See Giepert, 531 So.2d at 756 ("[t]he 1960 amendment did not except judges then in office from its scope, but it did permit sitting judges to continue to serve until age 80 or until they had achieved 20 years of service, whichever came first") (emphasis added).
Defendant relies on dicta from our decision in In re Levy, 427 So.2d 844 (La.1983), which suggested that the right under the 1921 Constitution to serve beyond seventy-five years of age if needed to complete twenty years of service was not conditioned upon having been in office prior to the 1960 amendment. Id. at 846 ("[t]he retirement provision in effect in the Constitution of 1921 when Judge Levy was elected and took office provided that '[ejvery judge shall retire upon reaching the age of 75 years.' . [i]f a judge reached seventy-five with less than twenty years service, he could serve until eighty or until he acquired twenty years service, whichever came first"). Judge Levy, like defendant herein, assumed office under the Constitution of 1921 as amended in 1960. Implicit in our language in Levy is that the right to serve beyond 75, if twenty years of service has not been reached, is not conditioned upon having been in office in 1960 because Levy was not in office at that time. See Id. at 848 ("Judge Levy's right to retire at the age of eighty was not diminished by [the 1974 Constitution]").
In neither Levy nor Giepert was the issue at bar squarely before us and their respective dicta is irreconcilable; the meaning of "now serving" therefore must be found in the interplay between the two constitutions and the purpose of Article 7 § 8 of the Constitution of 1921.
The word "now" references time; its most common meaning is "at the present time — at this moment." Webster's Third New International Dictionary at 1546 (1971) (unabridged). A closer look at this definition reveals two distinct meanings; while "at the present time" implies a time frame merely relative to past and future, "at this moment" implies a specific point in time. If we were to ascribe this latter meaning to the word, what specific point in time should we choose? The language itself gives us no guidance whatsoever:
[W]ould "now serving" mean at the time the legislature passed the act, or the time the electorate approved it, or the time the constitutional amendment was promulgated and became effective?
Small v. Levy, 355 So.2d 643, 649 (La.App. 4th Cir.) (en banc) (Boutall, J. concurring) writ denied 361 So.2d 450 (1978).
The issue before us implicates not only judicial service rights but retirement benefits; mandatory retirement is only one provision of a retirement scheme in the 1921 Constitution and is a corollary to a directive for the creation of a statutory retirement scheme in the 1974 Constitution. See LSA-Const. Art. 5 § 24 (1974); LSA-Const. Art. 7 § 8 (1921). In Swift v. State, 342 So.2d 191 (La.1977), we observed that pension statutes are to be construed liberally to effectuate their purpose. The same can be said of a pension provision in the constitution. In Swift we were presented with a somewhat similar situation; language in the statute there at issue read:
Any person who has served as the judge of a court of record in this state for a period of at least eighteen years and who has at least three years in the military service in the armed forces . and who does not, upon the effective date of the section, qualify for retirement benefits . shall be paid a monthly pension equal to two-thirds of [his salary].
LSA-R.S. 13:8. The issue was whether "upon the effective date of the section" applied to all three conditions (18 years of judicial service, three years of military service, and ineligibility for the judicial retirement plan). We held that judges who fulfilled the military service condition but who had not yet served for eighteen years were nonetheless eligible, noting that the adverbial phrase ("upon the effective date....") could have been placed at the beginning of the sentence were it intended to apply to all three conditions. Swift, 342 So.2d at 195. The same reasoning applies a fortiori to the language at bar. In fact, the very phrase at issue in Swift would have easily conveyed the meaning plaintiff would have us ascribe to "now."
It is also of some import that it is a constitution we are interpreting: while statutes are subject to repeated revisions, a constitution is intended as a framework, "a continuing instrument of government," which must endure an indefinite future on a daily basis. See U.S. v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 61 S.Ct. 1031, 85 L.Ed. 1368 (1941) ("[w]e read its words, not as we read legislative codes which are subject to continuous revision, but as the revelation of the great purposes which were intended to be achieved by the Constitution as a continuing instrument of government"). See also Brennan, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv.L.Rev. 489, 495 (1977) ("[cjonstitutions are not ephemeral documents designed to meet passing occasions. The future is their care, and therefore, in their application, our contemplation cannot be only of what has been but of what may be").
The constitution under which defendant first took her oath of office read, in pertinent part, "any judge now serving . may remain in the service until he has served for twenty years or until he has attained the age of eighty years." Plaintiffs position would require a reference to matters extraneous to the document to pinpoint a date, and even reference to the act itself is not dispositive. See Small, 355 So.2d 643, 649 (Boutall, J. concurring). We interpret the Article 7, Section 8, language in the 1921 Constitution, "now serving," to include a judge who took office under that language, i.e, prior to January 1, 1975.
Lastly, this suit contests a candidacy for public office. The purpose of the process of election is to provide the electorate with a field of worthy candidates from which to choose. See Nunez v. Plaisance, 196 La. 926, 200 So. 302 (1941). Encouraging qualification is an integral component, and any law regulating this process must be interpreted mindful of this purpose. See Nunez, 200 So. at 304.
The judgment of the court of appeal is reversed. Plaintiff's suit is dismissed at her costs.
Reversed.
WATSON, J., concurs. See reasons assigned in dissent in Levy, 427 So.2d 844 (La.1983).
DENNIS, J., assigns additional concurring reasons.
COLE, J., respectfully dissents, concluding the opinion of the Court of Appeal correctly sets forth the law.
LEMMON, J., dissents and assigns reasons.
. It is noted that Judge Wingerter served continuously after first assuming office in 1948.