Year: 1866

| Hon. Reverdy johnson has been applied tt
by committee of the citizens of Baltimore, te
act as their counsel in their appeal for the re-
mova of the police commissioners. Other pro-
fessional engagements prevent his acceding to
the request, but he writes letter, from which
we make the following extracts
! Has the Governor, in the recess of the Gen
eral Assembly, the power to remove the police
commissioners of the city for official miscon-
duct?" have no doubt that he has.
| The words Of the law are so plain as to admit
Of but one construction. The duties of the
Board are prescribed, and to guard against fail
ure to perform them, Ia contingency that might
happen, the law says, for official misconduct,
by concurrent vote of the two houses of the
General Assembly, or By the Gouernor during
the recess thereof


This is the only provision on the subject. =
The offence guarded against is 'officlal miscon-
duct. = The penalty for it is not fine or i'm
prisonment, but removal from Office alone, and
the authority to investigate all the facts and en-
force the penalty is. if in session, the General
Assembly if not in session, the Governor
There being now legislative recess, the juris
diction and the power to award the penalty is
in the Governor. 1t is suggested, | am told,
that before he can remove the commissioners,
the fact of their official misconduct must be
tried by court and jury. This is absurd


First. Because the courts are not named in
the law, either expressly orimplledly, as having
any jurisdiction In the case.


Second Because the Governor, who can
alone render the judgment of removal, has de-
volved upon him the entire responsibility and
that being so it must be for him exclusively to
investigate and decide the fact, and not avoid
responsibility by referring it to the courts.


Third. Because he has no right to call upon
court or jury to assist him, and no one else
has such right.


Fourth. Because no matter what court
might find to be the fact, it could not if found
one way, award the only penalty that can be
rendered, or if found in the other, deprive the
Governor Of his power to award it, or absolve
him from the duty of doing so.


And lastly, because his power during a leg
lsatlve recess, is the same over the facts and
penalty as that of the General Assembly when
in session, and suppose that no one will hold
that that body could only act in association with
or IN subordlnation to any of the courts of the
State


It is impossible, think, for a sound mind to
entertain doubt upon the point.


The long and well settled doctrine of the
Presidents power to remove officers under the
constitution of the United States, is in conflict
with such theory 1t is now, and has been
since the organization of the government, set
tied that the power exists.


The only doubt ever entertained about it was
that it was not concident to the power of ap-
pointment but that. as that power was in the
President and Senate Jointly, removal re-
quired the sanction Of both. Neither in the
debate when the question was first agitated,
nor in any that has since been had, was it init
mated that if the power had been given in ex-
press terms to the President, he could not ex-
ercise it, Or that it was not his duty to do so
without the aid of any other body, legislative
or judicial.


Upon the whole, therefore, have no doubt
that it is given to the Governor alone (the Leg
islature not being in session. to investigate into
the truth of the alleged misconduct of the po-
lice commissioners. and to remove them, if he
be satisfied that they have been guilty Of ''offi
cial misconduct"


Yours, respectfully,


REyERDY JOHNSON