Court Opinion

ID: 9657575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:30:43.010662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:05:50.218937
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). I agree with Justice O’Haea. Along with my endorsement of his opinion, I believe it permissible that further reference be made to the degree of respect we ordinary mortals of the 1960’s “Drest in a little brief authority”1, owe to the timelessly valuable precepts which appeared early in our reports. Three of us — still here — pursued that thought pertinently when People v. Holbrook (1964), 373 Mich 94, 99 was handed down:
“We have in this State a rule of statutory construction which — for this case — will bear repeating. It is that a long continued construction, given a long-standing statute by executive officers charged with its execution and administration (no one meanwhile having questioned such construction so far as our reports disclose), is entitled to most respectful consideration and will not be overruled without cogent reasons.”
On the occasion of Holbrook this Court had before it for guidance, not only a unanimous decision writ*522ten by Mr. Justice Cooley (Johnson v. Ballou [1874], 28 Mich. 379), but also a long since mature opinion of the attorney general,  both of which, amply supported the principle quoted above. The period of continuously unchallenged administrative interpretation and application involved in this case being at least as long as that considered in Holbrook, I would adhere to the even more firm convictions which this Court recorded in Malonny v. Mahar (1847), 1 Mich 26, 29, 30:
“The construction I have given to the statute is the construction which it has received by the executive department of the State government, and by the county treasurers, ever since the revised statutes went into operation, and its correctness has never, up to the present time, been questioned. This construction has become universal, and we are not disposed to disturb it at this time, without stronger reasons than were urged by counsel upon the argument. It has become, to some extent, a rule of. property. Many titles depend upon it, and In this view it is important to sustain the acts of the deputy, unless his authority to do the act complained of is manifestly against law. This I have endeavored to show is not the case.
“In conclusion, we think that the deputy treasurer had, by a fair and reasonable construction of the statute, the authority to administer the oath required by section 9; and that this construction having been uniformly given to the statute by the State and county authorities, we have the right, even if the statute were doubtful, to invoke the aid of the legal maxim, communis error facit jus, and sustain his authority.”
Communis error facit jus spells out, as I recall, that' common error makes law. If it were error administrative to construe and apply sections 9 and *52310 of part 2 (CLS 1961, §§412.9, 412.10) as the department below has done for so many years — and that upon rehearing bas become tbe more doubtful— I would say with Malonny that the error itself has made the law to which we owe fidelity.

 Shakespeare, Measure For Measure, act 2, scene 2.