Case Name: Rafael A. RIVERA-CRUZ, Appellant, v. R. A. GRAY, as Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Appellee; Verle A. POPE, Appellant, v. R. A. GRAY, as Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Appellee
Court: Florida Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1958-07-25
Citations: 104 So. 2d 501
Docket Number: 
Parties: Rafael A. RIVERA-CRUZ, Appellant, v. R. A. GRAY, as Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Appellee. Verle A. POPE, Appellant, v. R. A. GRAY, as Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Appellee.
Judges: HOBSON and O’CONNELL, JJ., concur.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 104
Pages: 501–508

Head Matter:
Rafael A. RIVERA-CRUZ, Appellant, v. R. A. GRAY, as Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Appellee. Verle A. POPE, Appellant, v. R. A. GRAY, as Secretary of State of the State of Florida, Appellee.
Supreme Court of Florida.
July 25, 1958.
Rehearing Denied Aug. 1, 1958.
Matthews & Quinton, Miami, for appellants.
Richard W. Ervin, Atty. Gen., Wilson Wright and Ralph M. McLane, Asst. Attys. Gen., and George John Miller, Miami, for appellee.
Howard W. Dixon and Alfred I. Hopkins, Miami, amici curiae.

Opinion:
THOMAS, Justice.
Separate suits were instituted by Rafael A. Rivera-Cruz and Verle A. Pope against the Secretary of State to enjoin him from having placed on the ballots to be used in the general election of 1958 a proposed re vision of the Constitution. The purpose of the litigation was to prevent the needless expenditure of public funds — needless, so it was charged, because the legislature had failed to comply with the provisions of Sec. 2 of Article XVII, F.S.A. in its procedure to present the revision to the electorate. Emphasis should be given the word "revision" which the appellants have chosen as a term for the proposals that will appear on the ballots unless the appellants prevail in this litigation.
This appeal brings here for review the decree of the chancellor holding valid the method, presently to be described, adopted by the legislature, and denying the injunction.
Sec. 2 of Article XVII relates to "Method of revising constitution." Under this portion of the Constitution the members of the Senate and House of Representatives may by a two-thirds vote determine that a revision is necessary and note the action upon their respective journals. It is specified that notice of such action be given for three months before the next election of representatives and that at the election the electors be given the opportunity to vote for or against the revision. If a majority vote favorably, the legislature is charged to provide by law for a convention to revise the Constitution.
The appellants take the position that what is intended to be submitted to the electors at the next general election is a revision of the Constitution in the guise of amendments. Of course, no attempt has been made to follow the procedure outlined in Sec. 2, Article XVII, supra.
It is the contention of the appellee that the part of the Constitution to which we have referred is inapposite and that the pertinent portion is Sec. 1 of Article XVII which contains provisions for proposal of amendments by either branch of the legislature. When these proposed amendments are "agreed to by three-fifths of the members elected to each House" they are published for a specified time and submitted to the electorate at the next general election. If a majority of voters express approval they become parts of the Constitution.
The question, then, is whether the proposals to be printed on the ballots for the impending election are amendments authorized by Sec. 1 or amount to an attempt at revision by using the more simplified procedure governing amendments, and it is complicated by the presence of the word "revision" in the section since it was amended in 1948.
At the outset we observe that Sec. 2 has not been modified since the Constitution of 1885 was adopted by the electorate while Sec. 1 remained unchanged until amended at the general election of 1948. Before that the single word used in Sec. 1 relating to the means of altering the Constitution was "amendments"; the lone word used in Sec. 2 concerning change has, since 1885, been "revision."
It was in the amendment adopted in 1948 that the word "revision" was introduced into Sec. 1. We do not discover in the language of the section as it now stands any intention to abandon or interfere with Sec. 2 dealing solely with "revision." Nor do we find after careful study of both sections that Sec. 1, after amendment, prescribed, an alternative way to revise the constitution. So we decide that two methods of changing the Constitution still obtain and that they may not be intermingled. We are convinced that in the use of the two words "revision" and "amendment" there was no intention so to distinguish them within the section that the revision contemplated by the adoption of Sec. 2 could be accomplished under Sec. 1.
Whereas Sec. 1, before amendment, contained the provision that either branch of the legislature could propose "amendments," after the adoption in 1948 either branch was empowered to "propose the revision or amendment of any portion or portions of [the] Constitution." The "revision or amendment," could affect one or more subjects, but no "amendment" could consist of more than one revised article. In the second paragraph, as in the first, "revision" and "amendment" are used interchangeably and are always in the singular.
The present proposals were embodied in 14 joint resolutions of the legislature of 1957, and are intended to revise the preamble and every article of the Constitution except Article V. In each of the resolutions it is provided that the particular amendment embedded in it shall not be effective unless all amendments, of the preamble and all articles except Article V, are approved by a majority of the votes cast. In the briefs and in the decree this arrangement is called the "daisy chain" system.
Any process of changing the Constitution is cumbersome, made so purposely in order that the organic law may not be easily re-molded to fit situations and sentiments that are relatively transitory and fleeting. This probably was a compelling reason for the procedure specified in Sec. 2 of Article XVII for revision of the Constitution. Nevertheless, the complicated and protracted method of revision would not be adequate for changes of parts of the organic law to meet the needs of progress so amendments of portions were made possible by a comparatively simple procedure. Even this process is so involved that the electors in 1942 adopted an amendment, Sec. 3, Article XVII, providing for emergency alteration of the Constitution. In thé Constitutions of 1861 and 1865 even amendments could not originate in the legislature for they contained provisions that "[n]o part of this Constitution shall be altered except by a Convention duly elected." Sec. 1 of the present Constitution, before and after amendment, in our opinion, was meant to deal with the change of parts, not the whole, of the Constitution. Were this not so there would seem to be no need of provisions for a convention.
Four Constitutions of the State preceded the one now in effect. In each of them, Sec. 1, Article XIV of the Constitution of 1838, Sec. 1, Article XIV of the Constitution of 1861, Secs. 1 to 3 of Article XIV of the Constitution of 1865, and Sec. 2 of Article XVII of the Constitution of 1868, were provisions for revision by convention. In the present Constitution we find the same specification for constitutional conventions, and each of the five Constitutions was framed in a convention.
We realize the confusion that would result if some of the present proposed amendments were accepted and some rejected and the practicability therefore of linking them together. But practicalities cannot, however sound, justify a circumvention of a provision of the Constitution for creation and organization of a convention. If the changes attempted are so sweeping that it is necessary to include the provisions interlocking them, then it is plain that the plan would constitute a recasting of the whole Constitution and this, we think, it was purposed to accomplish only by a convention under Sec. 2 which has not yet been disturbed.
Another feature that, in our opinion, renders invalid the "daisy chain" method is the difference in origin of complete, and partial changes. Amendments originate in the legislature and the people have the choice only of acceptance or rejection of the ones the legislature submits; in the case of revision, the legislature has primarily only the power of determining that a revision is "necessary." As we have written, the people themselves decide whether or not they desire a revision. If they approve, the legislature then has the duty to enact a law providing for a convention consisting of a membership equal in numbers to the membership of the House of Representatives. But in such instance the law-making body has no voice in formulation of the new Constitution. In other words, under the former system the legislature proposes; under the latter the legislature only expresses a need and, if the declaration is approved by the electorate, carries into effect the will of the people to create a convention.
The people's delegates, elected for the purpose, then weigh proposed provisions, debate their merits, decide what shottld become and what should not become the organic law. If the method now attempted should be sanctioned, the right of the people to form and develop ideas and forge them into organic rights, guaranties privileges and immunities would be transferred from the people, or the people's delegates, to the legislature. The right of origination by persons set to the task by the electors would be completely eliminated.
A situation similar to the present one was considered by the Supreme Court of California. The constitution of that state contained provisions very much like ours for revision of the constitution by a convention called for the purpose. An attempt was made to effect extensive changes by resorting to provisions governing amendments. The court disapproved the procedure discussing at considerable length the sharp difference between amendment and revision and the reasons the two should not be confused. McFadden v. Jordan, 32 Cal.2d 330, 196 P.2d 787, 789. We disagree with the claim of the Attorney General that there is no analogy between that case and this one. The underlying fundamental principles of amendment and revision with which that court dealt are present i-n this controversy and the opinion of the California court that they are so unrelated that they cannot be blended coincides with our view on the subject. And it is because of the clear distinction that we reject the argument that the language in Sec. 1, as amended, can be construed as an intention to provide an alternative manner of revising the whole Constitution.
The Attorney General has referred to "the familiar principles that the organic law is supreme and that the people are sovereign." Revision by interlocked amendments would frustrate the sovereign right of the people to re-frame the entire organic law by the means the people themselves proclaimed when they adopted the present Constitution.
Relative to the importance to the people of effecting revision in convention the Supreme Court of California in McFadden v. Jordan, supra, quoted with approval the statement in a former opinion, Livermore v. Waite, 102 Cal. 113, 36 P. 424, that by that method " 'the entire sovereignty of the people is represented " The court further distinguished, by quoting from Livermore v. Waite, supra, between revision in convention, in which the people through their delegates may frame a constitution free of any limitation, except such as is imposed by the Constitution of the United States, and an amendment originating in the legislature which is " 'such an addition or change within the lines of the original instrument as will effect an improvement or better carry out the purposes for which it was framed.' " (Italics supplied.)
The course now attempted, if sanctioned, would amount to a circumvention of Sec. 2 of Article XVII. Sec. 1 of the Article can be, and should be, construed so as to preserve Sec. 2.
That the present attempt is one to rewrite the Constitution in toto there can be no doubt. The proposal carries its own label for in Sec. 1 of Article XIII it is provided that "[tjhis constitution as adopted and as thereafter amended, shall bear the short title: Florida Constitution of 1958. When the Preamble and Articles hereof become effective all articles of the constitution of 1885 except Article V shall be superseded thereby and are repealed (Italics supplied.)
The last sentence of Sec. 1 of Article XVII now in force seems to us to contradict the assertion that it affords, in the manner now attempted, an added way to overhaul the Constitution for it reads that if a majority of the electors "voting upon the amendment adopt such amendment [both in the singular] the same shall become a part of this Constitution." (Italics supplied.)
The appellee argues that the letter of the organic law has been followed because no amendment consists of "more than one revised article" which is the requirement of. Sec. 1 of Article XVII. The purpose of this requirement is to permit an elector to vote intelligently for the amendments he favors and against the ones he disapproves. Under the "daisy chain" system all amendments must be accepted or all will be rejected, therefore the right of the elector to approve one or few will become worthless unless all others, including the ones he rejects, receive a majority vote of approval. When the requirement for separate amendments is ostensibly met but approval is made inseverable, substance is sacrificed to form.
We conclude that the manner of presenting the so-called amendments to the electorate is contrary to the spirit and intent of the Constitution and, consequently, that no public monies should be spent for the purpose.
Nothing in this opinion is meant to deal w'th the validity of House Joint Resolution 32-X, Extraordinary Session of the Florida Legislature 1957. That matter was not adjudicated in the chancery court and was not presented here.
Reversed with directions to enjoin the expenditure for placing the 14 proposed amendments on the ballot.
HOBSON and O'CONNELL, JJ., concur.
TERRELL, C. J., and THORNAL, J., concur specially.