Court Opinion

ID: 9812525
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:40:25.514996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:03.983822
License: Public Domain

Clark, J.,
concurring: So far from the decision in Carr v. Coke, 116 N. C., 223, conflicting with the decision of this case, it is the strongest vindication of the wisdom and necessity of placing Article 14, Section II, in the Constitution. In Carr v. Coke, the majority of the Court felt constrained to hold that a bill of a general legislative nature and not imposing a tax, when authenticated by the certificate and signatures of the Speakers, could not be impeached, though it was averred in the complaint and shown by the Journals that such bill had, in fact, been tabled on the second reading in the House in which it had been introduced, and consequently had not reached the other House at all. This being so, if the people should desire by constitutional amendment or by a provision inserted by a constitutional convention to require other safeguards of the actual passage of laws than the signatures of the Speakers, can there be any doubt that they have the power to do so? Now, as to the passage of the class of bills specified in Section 14, Article II, they had the foresight to do this very thing and to require additional guarantees by providing that such *407bills should not become laws unlesss read on three different days in each House and unless “the yeas and nays on the second and third readings shall have been entered on the Journal,” which Journal, Section 16, of the same Article requires to be “printed and made public immediately after the adjournment of the General Assembly.” As to such matters, in which great amounts of money are at stake, the public were not willing to run the risk of bills being palmed off as Statutes through the inadvertence of the Speakers or the venality of Clerks of the General Assembly, without having, in fact, been enacted. These additional requirements are not mere technicalities, but indispensable safe-guards which experience has caused to be inserted in the Constitutions of many of the States to protect the public against the grossest abuses in the creation of indebtedness or authorizing taxation by the State, Counties and towns. Carr v. Coke holds that as to bills not embraced in Section 14 Article II, the certificate of the Speakers is conclusive evidence of passage and the Courts are powerless to go behind their signatures. The decision in this case holds that, as to the class of bills referred to in Section 14, such certificate is expressly made not sufficient, and the bills are not laws unless the additional requirements of that Section appear by the Journal to have been complied with.
There is no conflict between the two decisions, and this has heretofore been pointed out in Bank v. Commissioners, 119 N. C., 214.