Opinion ID: 1431257
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: what was the true intent in 1966?

Text: The scores of individuals involved in the drafting and approval of the 1966 revision of the words concerning us that now are in effect (The Lieutenant Governor shall act as Governor during the impeachment, absence from the State, or other temporary disability of the Governor) might have written, The Lieutenant Governor shall act as Governor during the impeachment or other temporary disability of the Governor. Instead they included and thus preserved absence from the State. Does that imply an intent in 1966 to cast in concrete all the old assumptions on what those four words demand? I think not. In February 1966 the California Constitution Revision Commission submitted the first of many reports to the Legislature. It was lengthy (212 pages). It proposed first, that many words (16,000 out of 22,000) be deleted from the Constitution (from articles III to VIII and also XXIV); second, that many other words be left unchanged; third, that new wordings be adopted to effect major and minor revisions, several of them simplificatory only. Was there an intent in 1966 to freeze the nonjudicial, archaic interpretation of absence from the State that my majority colleagues now decree? Their opinion relies on excerpts from February 23, 1966, testimony before the Assembly Interim Committee on Constitutional Amendments. They summarize it as follows ( ante, p. 118): [S]pecial counsel to the Constitution Revision Commission was asked the meaning of `absence from the state' and its reference to `disability.' Counsel's response indicated that `absence from the state' meant physical absence in the literal sense; as to the use of the term `disability,' he stated: `... [T]he Commission felt that if the Constitution should prohibit the Governor from acting then it should be classified as a disability. It is not an inability. The Governor could be some place outside the State and be very capable of performing his duties by a long distance telephone. He would be legally disabled from doing so. Disability is more accurate.' The quoted words (and also those in the majority's fn. 5) are best understood if we check the full testimony. To use snippets... is perilous. ( People v. Tanner (1979) 24 Cal.3d 514, at p. 539 [156 Cal. Rptr. 450, 596 P.2d 328] (conc. opn.).) The Commission's special counsel and the staff attorney who testified with him understandably had to ad-lib many answers to often-tough questions put by legislators at the hearing. [2] I doubt that the special counsel, if pressed, could have documented his view (quoted in my excerpt from the majority opinion) as to what it was the Commission felt. There were some 80 commissioners  including 6 legislative members, 17 ex officio legislative members, and 11 individuals who had resigned or died. The draft language that puzzles us here was a tiny segment of a huge set of initial recommendations. Most commissioners, obviously, felt nothing whatsoever on our subject. Regarding what the Commission [might have] felt, are not the most reliable guides the words that appear in the Commission's formal proposal? It read: The Lieutenant Governor ... shall act as Governor during the impeachment, absence from the State, or other temporary disability of the Governor.... The Legislature shall provide for an order of precedence after the Lieutenant Governor ... for the temporary exercise of [the Governor's] functions. To be contrasted are certain words (which I now bracket and italicize) that the Commission proposed to delete from the then existing Constitution, as amended in 1948: In case of impeachment of the Governor..., his absence from the State, or his other temporary disability [ to discharge the powers and duties of office ], then the powers and duties of the Office of Governor devolve upon the same officer as in the case of vacancy in the Office of Governor [ but only until the disability shall cease ]. It seems clear that the proposed deletion of to discharge the powers and duties of office evidenced no intent to change other temporary disability and that the deletion of but only until the disability shall cease involved mere style. Those two phrases are helpful, though, in analyzing the 1946 deletion of the word inability.