Court Opinion

ID: 9664165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:05:17.295909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:02.738100
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
{dissenting).
“The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and liberty; for it is a singular fact, but none the less a fact, and well known by the most common experience, that men will do things under the terror of the party lash that they would not on any account or for any consideration do otherwise.”1
With equal application to that perfectly coincident dovetail known as the UAW case [Michigan State *462UAW Community Action Program Council v Secretary of State] (post starting p 506), it may be written cynically of this highly irregular, prematurely commenced and rammed through proceeding that never have so few done so much and so fast for any political party. Mighty hosannahs for the Brethren four will be sounded and sung from out Detroit, the darkly portentous tones of which, pealed to the perverted music of “Michigan our Michigan”, are bound to carry from Saginaw’s tall whispering pines to Lake Superior’s farthest mines.

First: Preliminary Outline a/nd Comment

In the Great Journal of things that are due to happen in the course of Michigan’s judicial annals, this in the ultimate is bound to be the most gravely consequential of all proceedings that will have come to the highest Court of our state during the present decade. On that account the proceeding has deserved much more than the peremptory attention it has received since first filing here on February 1. And since the raw power of 4 votes has from the beginning tolerated no thought that § 6 of the legislative article should be administered deliberately through all procedural requirements of that section, with judicial aim timed to the concurrent Senate and House elections of 1974, the ensuing dissent must be equally harsh. All cavil aside, today’s prodded decision is tainted with every indicia of partisanship; the prospect of which is Democratic advantage effected by holding this year’s election of the House of Bepresentatives according to a new Democratic rearrangement of the House elective districts. As such the decision will steer to great extent the political destiny of our state until 1982. That is enough to stimulate roughcast dissent.
*463This is the constitutional fourth year when we elect the President. It is the elective year of that ever greater turnout of Democratic voters. It is the elective year for which this Court — accomplished by another summary partisan order dated March 10; UAW v Austin, post [Michigan State UAW Community Action Program Council v Secretary of State] ■ — • has just reregistered thousands of former registered voters on demand of the Democratic party. It is one of the elective years, unlike 1964, 1966 and 1974, when but one division of our bicameral Legislature may by the Constitution be nominated and elected. It is the elective year when nominating petitions for the office of State Representative may be circulated lawfully up to this year’s June 20 deadline only within the 1966-established House elective districts. In any view of this proceeding, the just approved Democratic plan cannot “become law” ahead of time without breaking the law.
Finally, this is the year for which there lays fully unfolded a hurriedly-hatched and purposely mistimed scheme of the Democratic party to take over, decisively, the House of Representatives. From its onset January 28 that scheme has depended upon recklessly fast judicial action, decreed not of legal right or authority but of partisan insistence. Now, on May 4, the Court has forced headlong upon the electorate and all House candidates a frankly partisan rearrangement of the elective districts of the House to accommodate an illegal time-schedule. Even if the constitutionally required 60-day publication were to commence tomorrow, rather than a few days hence, circulation of nominating petitions under the new plan could not validly commence, un-; der § 6 and present statute, until after July 4. That is far toó late by the law we are sworn to up*464hold and enforce, as the acting Chief Justice urgently adjured by his memo of February 3 (Appendix III, post p 487). Yet a Court that accuses others of “political shenanigans” has just ordered that such be done. Quite a Court, this!
As we shall see by official documents, time for what has been granted here became the great essence of partisan necessity and, yes, necessity knows no law. It was of that essence when the Democratic half of the constitutional Commission on Legislative Apportionment abruptly forsook constitutional duty and ran ex parte to this Court on February 1. It is even more of that frantic essence, now that the called legal deadline of “April 10 or 11” has come and gone. Did not the acting Chief Justice sound the Democratic call to arms by this sentence:
“This means that if a new plan is to be adopted for the 1972 elections, this Court is faced with a deadline on or about April 10 or 11 to decide upon a plan.”? 2
It just doesn’t matter that the Senate has already been elected for a four-year term ending December 31,1974 (under apportionment and districting based on the 1960 census). It doesn’t matter that our Constitution as well as the Fourteenth Amendment requires that Michigan’s bicameral Legislature be newly-apportioned, newly districted and newly elected at the same time, according to a “final plan” based on the 1970 census and readied for the simultaneous election of the Senate and the House in 1974. It doesn’t seem to matter that today’s precipitous decision will have rendered wholly impotent paragraph 8 of § 6:
“Upon the application of any elector filed not later than 60 days after final publication of the plan, the *465supreme court, in the exercise of original jurisdiction, shall direct the secretary of state or the commission to perform their duties, may review any final plan adopted by the commission, and shall remand such plan to the commission for further action if it fails to comply with the requirements of this constitution.”
All that matters is that the Democratic party, which by its appointed representatives at bar is the real and instant movant, wants to dominate pronto the House of Representatives before taking on the Senate in 1974; the Constitution and the rights thereunder of a deserving people to the contrary notwithstanding.
Unwittingly four Democratic nominees to this Court have set the degrading tone of what was instituted as a colorable — because premature — proceeding. They excuse it however, as when the pot called the kettle black, the four having blandly indicted “both political parties making up the Commission this year” with allegation that those thus described have been guilty of “political shenanigans”.3 Meanwhile however, the four have made uncharacteristic haste to provide — months ahead of the prescribed constitutional schedule — exactly what the Democratic half of the Commission demanded when it moved here February 1 and hot-wired a partially absent Court into galvanic action. As acting Chief Justice Adams unguardedly admitted at the time, there was due to be “considerable pressure for the Court to act as speedily as possible”.4 No overstatement that, as party whip and the *466ensuing partisan drive to today’s political decision have quickly proved.
Since the recording of that odious partisan-divisive decision “by impasse” (April 6, 1966; In re Apportionment of Legislature, 377 Mich 396, 416, 474, 475), I have remained grimly around to take part in this second of Michigan’s decennially momentous legislative apportionment proceedings. As in 1966, I stand for the right of our people to have § 6, article 4 of their Constitution administered faithfully; not twisted and tortured or hurried or delayed for partisan advantage, or shamelessly emasculated by arrant omission of a supposedly responsible Court to force Michigan’s Commission on Legislative Apportionment to perform its exclusively assigned task. What exclusive task — you ask? Why simply that of proceeding, within that to this day unexpired 180-day period, “to district and apportion the senate and house of representatives according to the provisions of this constitution”.
This dissent is written in part to caution other states that may have contemplated, unto now, the adoption of decennial apportionment proceedings like ours. They should look first to the supposedly responsible human element that is finally involved, for as Alexander Pope wrote:
“For forms of government let fools contest; Whate’er is best administer’d is best.”
Which is to say precisely that Michigan has an excellent system of constitutional procedure leading to constitutional reapportionment and redistricting of her Legislature every ten years; also that our now and sinee-1966 proven weak link is the contitutionally appointed supervisor of the constitu*467tional Commission.5 It is a partisan nominated and “nonpartisan” elected Supreme Court6 which, simply hasn’t the innards to order, contrary to the will of whatever political party has nominated a majority of the seated Justices, that the constitutional Commission perform from start to paragraph 8 finish its decennially steamheated chore of reapportionment and redistricting of the Legislature; a chore which the Court may not lawfully take over, a chore that means so much for years ahead to the people of Michigan.
Where other states have available a really nonpartisan Court of final resort to supervise, the system should work to general satisfaction; no matter the consequential sore toes of partisans. But where such a Court is not available or callable into service, I tender with deference this gratuitous advice; don’t try the Michigan system. Try anything but that. Witness our ignominy of 1966, starting with the writer’s January 17, 1966, memorandum (377 Mich 408) headed “for issuance of immediate mandatory writ” and ending with that four-four standoff of a then equally-divided Supreme Court (377 Mich 474, 475). And witness now the execrable omission of a Democratic majority here to tell the Commission it must start out anew and of right by submitting to all of its members all of the various plans its members desire voted upon by the Commission so that, if all action of the Commission is negative, the submitted and Commission-considered plans, those only, *468are turned over to the Supreme Court for paragraph 7 test.
The February 1 dash to this Court of the Democratic half of the constitutional Commission, and the Court’s helter-skelter majority order of February 9 (see Appendix IY, post at p 489), were and are unconstitutional. Except for partisan advantage, they were and yet are so unnecessary. On January 28 last, when upon allegation of the Democratic Secretary of State the Commission planned no further meetings, the Commission had used but 49 days of that 180-day period which, by paragraph 5 of § 6, was and yet is provided for completion of its task. The Commission on January 28 actually had more than four months within which to “complete its work”. Further, and commencing with the Court’s order of February 9, it simply wasn’t possible (lawfully that is), to perform and complete all of the requirements of § 6, including those of previously quoted paragraph 8, in time for any legislative election of 1972. Besides, the ultimate “final plan” called for by § 6 is a coordinate that should of constitutional intent be applied to simultaneous election of the House and Senate and that cannot be done, validly, until paragraph 8 proceedings have been concluded in time for the concurrent elections of 1974.7
It is plain, then, that the presently seated majority means by its judgment to bless our supposedly bicameral Legislature as a constitutionally-functioning body in 1973 and 1974, even though half of it was elected in 1970 for a four-year term according to *469a 1966 apportionment plan, and even though by the Court’s instant order the other half is to be elected this year according to a new plan of apportionment (a Democratic plan of course).
If Lincoln were here he surely would brand this political trick as half bastard and half legitimate. Doubtless, too, he would point out that all upcoming 1973 and 1974 legislation would stand constitutionally suspect for want of compliance with that which is now basic:
“We hold that, as a basic constitutional standard, the Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats of both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a population basis.” (Reynolds v Sims, 377 US 533, 568; 84 S Ct 1362; 12 L Ed 2d 506 [1964].)
Section 6 contemplates flatly that both elections take place at the same time according to a “final plan”. Can there be a “final plan”, made ready willy-nilly for two-year-separated elections of the two houses of the legislature, especially when that plan has never been tested under paragraph 8 of the section? For answer it is time to set forth here, verbatim, entire § 6 (each paragraph, unnumbered by the Constitution, is bracketed for ready convenience) :
[1]
“Sec. 6. A commission on legislative apportionment is hereby established consisting of eight electors, four of whom shall be selected by the state organizations of each of the two political parties whose candidates for governor received the highest vote at the last general election at which a governor was elected preceding each apportionment. If a candidate for governor of a third political party has received at such election more than 25 percent of such gubernatorial vote, the commission shall *470consist of 12 members, four of whom shall be selected by the state organization of the third political party. One resident of each of the following four regions shall be selected by each political party organization: (1) the upper peninsula; (2) the northern part of the lower peninsula, north of a line drawn along the northern boundaries of the counties of Bay, Midland, Isabella, Mecosta, Newaygo and Oceana; (3) southwestern Michigan, those counties south of region (2) and west of a line drawn along the western boundaries of the counties of Bay, Saginaw, Shiawassee, Ingham, Jackson and Hills-dale; (4) southeastern Michigan, the remaining counties of the state.
[2]
“No officers or employees of the federal, state or local governments, excepting notaries public and members of the armed forces reserve, shall be eligible for membership on the commission. Members of the commission shall not be eligible for election to the legislature until two years after the apportionment in which they participated becomes effective.
[3]
“The commission shall be appointed immediately after the adoption of this constitution and whenever apportionment or districting of the legislature is required by the provisions of this constitution. Members of the commission shall hold office until each apportionment or districting plan becomes effective. Vacancies shall be filled in the same manner as for original appointment.
[4]
“The secretary of state shall be secretary of the commission without vote, and in that capacity shall furnish, under the direction of the commission, all necessary technical services. The commission shall elect its own chairman, shall make its own rules of procedure, and shall receive compensation provided by law. The legislature shall appropriate funds to enable the commission to carry out its activities.
*471[5]
“Within 30 days after the adoption of this constitution, and after the official total population count of each federal decennial census of the state and its political subdivisions is available, the secretary of state shall issue a call convening the commission not less than 30 nor more than 45 days thereafter. The commission shall complete its work within 180 days after all necessary census information is available. The commission shall proceed to district and apportion the senate and house of representatives according to the provisions of this constitution. All final decisions shall require the concurrence of a majority of the members of the commission. The commission shall hold public hearings as may be provided by law.
[6]
“Each final apportionment and districting plan shall be published as provided by law within 30 days from the date of its adoption and shall become law 60 days after publication. The secretary of state shall keep a public record of all the proceedings of the commission and shall be responsible for the publication and distribution of each plan.
[7]
“If a majority of the commission cannot agree on a plan, each member of the commission, individually or jointly with other members, may submit a proposed plan to the supreme court. The supreme court shall determine which plan complies most accurately with the constitutional requirements and shall direct that it be adopted by the commission and published as provided in this section.
[8]
“Upon the application of any elector filed not later than 60 days after final publication of the plan, the supreme court, in the exercise of original jurisdiction, shall direct the secretary of state or the commission to perform their duties, may review any final plan adopted by the commission, and shall remand such plan to the commission for further action if it *472fails to comply with the requirements of this constitution.”
Before us remain (all others are withdrawn) but two proposed plans of legislative apportionment. They and all others were filed unilaterally without precedently authorized leave of the Constitution; also without recorded leave of Court until the majority order of February 9 was issued upon Court-asserted strength of the presently mentioned, wholly counterfeit and since withdrawn Hughes (Democratic) plan.8 Each of these remaining plans is designed for prospective bicameral effect until the census of 1980 is counted and made “available”, and thereafter until all proceedings required by § 6 are concluded.
One of the two remaining plans is the creation of the Republican half of the constitutional Commission. It was formally submitted to the Commission and voted down by the usual four-four vote on January 28 last. There can be little doubt now that when the constitutional Commissioners met last on January 28, and when the Democratic half of the Commission decided to come here February 1 ex parte, this Republican plan, had the then opponent Democratic plan beaten for constitutional quality.
The other is the February 18 filed creation of the Democratic half of the constitutional Commission. *473That plan was never submitted to the Commission at any time. It was delayed of filing with onr clerk until late on February 18, a Friday. That date, of pure coincidence of course, happened to be the last day allowed for the filing of plans with our clerk; a date which the Court’s majority had fixed by its order of February 9.
By this curiously arranged judicial procedure, what competitively equal opportunity did the Republican four ever have, before this Court, paragraph 7 considered? The political game having been started February 1 with the invalid filing of an invalid plan which the filers thereof knew could not be approved under paragraph 7; and the Court having granted the Democratic four nine days more within which to come up with a plan equaling or exceeding in constitutional quality the theretofore superior Republican plan; and the Democratic four having filed their new plan so late on the last day of the extended period that the Republican four had no opportunity whatever to examine that new plan in order to meet it, if possible, with compensatory amendments of their own plan; and the Court having decided not to “remand this cause to the Commission for further proceedings”,9 it is perfectly obvious that the Republican four have been subjected to that kind of “sudden death” extension of a contest during which one team only, by dictate of the referee, is to have possession of the ball. Indeed, the chances of the Republican team under paragraph 7 have been squeezed by the Court to less than those of that wax-legged dog of the parable when he tried to chase the asbestos cat through Hell; a fact that exposes the stark requirement, certainly when that *474can be done in ample time for judicious action headed toward the concurrent elections of 1974, that each “proposed plan” be submitted precedently to the Commission as a condition of judicial test thereof under paragraph 7. The Republican team and the party represented by it will at least have been handed an unvarnished message, here and by the majority judgment already entered in the companion UAW case. It is as Dickens chalked over the doorway of that Jarndyced old English Court: “Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!” (Bleak House, p 17).
In the ensuing factual narrative I have found it both due and appropriate to quote from several documents disclosing, both directly and circumstantially,10 * * * that too much of that heady stuff known as partisan politics has been steamed into the present proceeding and that this partisan-nominated Court should disqualify itself in favor of plenary resubmission under § 6 by and before the nonpartisan nominated and nonpartisan elected Court of Appeals, with that Court sitting en banc by authority of an order entered pursuant to 1968-amended § 23 of the judicial article. For the same motion in the related partisan action, see UAW et al v Austin, post, p 549.

Second: A Chronology of Hotspurred Action

For late January and the forepart of February Justice Adams had been appointed acting Chief Justice by the Chief Justice. But three Justices were in their offices at the time. They were Justices Adams, T. E. Brennan and the writer. One Justice was out of the county temporarily and was expected *475back “shortly”. Two more were attending legal conventions at New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The fourth was in Connecticut. (So the acting Chief Justice advised when he called the writer about this proceeding on February 3. See his memo to the Justices of February 3; Appendix III, post p 487). Hence no meeting or conference of the Court could have been or was called prior to entry by the acting Chief Justice of the majority order dated February 9 (Appendix IV, post p 489), the writer dissenting.11 Whatever conferential caucus of the majority that took place, between February 1 and February 9 as regards this proceeding, had to be accomplished by long distance. That just isn’t the way to handle critically important judicial business, and here we behold the Court’s first mistake; that of overlooking or hastily deciding bulging questions of prematurity prior to commitment of the Court to action the statewide political consequences of which are due now to be of ten years duration.
It was not physically possible, prior to entry of the acting Chief Justice’s order of February 9, for the absent Justices to examine in deliberative or other detail that Democratic Hughes’ plan as a jurisdictional basis for institution of paragraph 7 judicial action. Finally withdrawn as pointed out above, the Hughes plan consists of 11 pages of a “Petition Submitting An Apportionment Plan For The Michigan Legislature”, plus 1-1/4 inch thick detailed appendices, maps, population figures, etc. A careful and *476contemplative study thereof would require at least two days of judicially exclusive concentration, some of it necessarily done with the aid of a magnifying glass. If the reader thinks that was done by all of us between February 1 and February 9 as a basis for issuance of the Court’s railroaded order of February 9, he just doesn’t know us.
Refer now to the acting Chief Justice’s rapid-fire memos to the Justices of February 1, February 2 and February 3 (Appendices I, II and III, post pp 485-487). The first of these was hurried out, immediately upon filing of the Hughes plan, before anyone thought to ascertain whether the Commission actually had met to pass or adopt any motion or resolution attesting inability to “agree on a plan”. The second paragraph of the memo reads, pertinently:
“The Clerk has not as yet received an official notice from the Commission on Legislative Apportionment that it has been unable to agree upon a plan. However, it is understood that such a statement will he received by the Clerk very shortly.”
True enough, the acting Chief Justice was expecting an “official notice” from the Commission, “All final decisions [of which] shall require the concurrence of a majority of the members of the commission.” (From paragraph 5, of § 6.) But to this day the Court has received no word or verified document “from the Commission on Legislative Apportionment that it has been unable to agree upon a plan.” Then, with the shot-loaded whip snapping from Detroit toward Lansing, the Democratic Secretary of State tried nunc pro tunc to fill the constitutional gap by writing our clerk February 3, unilaterally as follows:
“Disagreement as to the import of the September 17, 1971, motion relative to the time schedule also *477caused a motion to adjourn and a motion to adjourn to 9:30 a.m., Friday, February 4,1972, failed to pass. Consequently, at 12:05 a.m., January 29,1972, Chairman Goebel adjourned the meeting. No future meeting is scheduled.”
I find nothing in the Constitution, and nothing whatever in the “rules of procedure” which the Commission adopted May 14, 1971, which even remotely might be said as authorizing the Secretary of State (a true Democrat of course) to write such a letter as and for support of an allegedly commenced paragraph 7 judicial proceeding. Nor will the reader find anything in § 6 or in the commission’s rules that might authorize the institution of a paragraph 7 proceeding in the absence of a “cannot agree” resolution of the Commission itself. The Democratic half of the Commission and in turn our majority have simply plunged ahead, without regard for the constitutional necessity of resolved evidence of final nonagreement of the Commission furnished by the Commission, knowing full well that the Commission on February 1 still had 127 days left, of its constitutionally allotted 180 days’ time, within which to “complete its work”. Even now that time-allotment will not expire until June 7 next.
It is sufficient to add that, when the Commission of 1964 came finally'to the point of inability to “agree on a plan”, it met, passed and certified to this Court a formal resolution of that constitutional body. And that was done before any Commissioner attempted to file a petition or plan here. The resolution:
“Be it resolved that the majority of the Commission on Legislative Apportionment is unable to agree upon a plan for the apportionment of the Michigan legislature as provided in Article IV of the Michigan Constitution.”
*478Can there remain donbt now that this proceeding has been driven ahead of constitutional schedule for partisan advantage, when except for such advantage there has been and is now no need or occasion for such haste?12 That there was such need and occasion eight years ago (In re Apportiomnent of State Legislature-1964, 373 Mich 247, 262 [1964]) forms no excuse for present hurry, for then both the Senate and the House elections of 1964 and 1966 were constitutionally due to be conducted concurrently and there was at the time no alternative other than a possible breakdown of Michigan’s legislative process as this Court waited for the handing down of the Reynolds v Sims line of decisions (377 US 533-743).
Let me make it plain. The majority by going along with the “political shenanigans” 13 it loftily deplores has effectively excised paragraph 8 from § 6, throughout the decennial period ahead. The fait having been accomplished this year, and the stalemate of 1965-66 recalled (377 Mich 474, 475), no one could be made to believe that any paragragh 8 proceeding started later this year would have any chance of success. The very idea of proceeding seriously under paragraph 8 would redden the face of the Court, and that is totally unthinkable.
To summarize this division of discussion I make bold to comment that “the political shenanigans of *479both political parties” are not exactly restricted to such parties and the Commissioners appointed by them. It would not be “futile” at all should the Court order that the Commission proceed with its duty, as proposed by the writer February 9, dissenting. It would be “futile” to remand with instructions when the Court hasn’t the will to enforce them. We saw that happen when a gutless Court wouldn’t enforce paragraphs 1 and 2 of its imperative order to the constitutional Commission dated November 2, 1965 (376 Mich 481, 482). For a delicate discussion of that miserable blench from duty, see 377 Mich 408-414.

Third: The Proper Application of That Paragraph 7 Phrase; “may submit a proposed plan to the supreme court.”

Whether with sanction of paragraph 7 of § 6 this Court could accept jurisdiction of a proceeding which to this day is in posse and not in esse, and whether the Court under paragraph 7 may now lawfully proceed as if such jurisdiction had been duly invoked, was raised by formal dissent registered when the Court’s order of February 9 was issued (Appendix IV, post p 489).
That issue has not and will not go away. It searehingly inquires whether the Court was legally and morally right in entering the order of February 9, knowing (a) that the Democratic half of the Commission had turned away from constitutional duty without benefit of clergy or shred of legal authority; (b) had done so more than 4 months prior to expiration of the prescribed 180 day period within which “to complete its work”, and (c) had proceeded posthaste to the Court with no plan of its own yet ready for paragraph 7 comparison with the Commission-considered Republican plan.
*480True, our majority recognizes no jurisdictional-question. It proceeds instead as if jurisdiction was duly conferred and, having stated what it calls a “procedural problem” this way:
“There is, however, one procedural problem which is present in the Republican’s ‘Motion to Foreclose’ which, as a threshold issue, must be resolved, vis., whether § 6, paragraph 7 requires expressly or impliedly that a ‘proposed plan’ must have been submitted to the Commission as a condition precedent to submission of the proposed plan to our Court”;
airily disposes of it on the basis of unclean hands of the Commission and upon strength of admissions made by members of the Commission, forgetting that all such considerations are quite irrelevant to the judicial determination of any proceeding involving, as this one does, not the rights and interests of either or both of the two political parties or their appointees but those of all of the people of Michigan. The majority disposition reads:
“As to the ‘public policy consideration,’ neither party is coming into our Court with clean hands. Both have engaged in partisan maneuvering. Both sides frankly admit they did not pass upon all of the plans submitted to the Commission. This is borne out by the Commission’s minutes, which reflect that 19 last hour motions for adoption of plans by the members failed for want of a concurrence of a majority. We hold it was not necessary to submit to our Court only plans previously presented to the Commission.”
I prefer to look directly at the merit of the posed question, assuming for the moment that this proceeding is jurisdictionally before the Court. Doing so, I find in § 6 that the word “plan” appears only in paragraphs 3, 6, 7 and 8. In paragraph 3 it ap*481pears in the expression “each apportionment or districting plan”; in paragraph 6 it appears in the expression “[e]ach final apportionment and districting plan”; in paragraph 7 it appears in the expressions “agree on a plan”, “may submit a proposed plan to the supreme court”, “determine which plan complies”; in paragraph 8 it appears in the expressions “after final publication of the plan”, “may review any final plan”, and “remand such plan”.
We start with fundamental knowledge that “proposed”, being alone in entire § 6, was put in paragraph 7 before “plan” for a definite purpose. If it was intended to permit submission to the Court of a “plan” not “proposed” to the Commission, would not the scriveners have written simply “a plan”, or “any plan”, or “any proposed or new plan”? Would not the electors then have understood definitely that the purpose was to permit what now is declaredly approved dixi by the Court, that is, submission on the late afternoon of a deadlined date of a plan put together after commencement of the judicial proceeding? As paragraph 7 reads, would not the electors have assumed understandably that “a proposed plan” meant any plan proposed before the Commission and then brought here?
Our now settled rule of “common understanding” applies-here. Witness Traverse City School District v Attorney General, 384 Mich 390, 405 (1971):
“The primary rule is the rule of ‘common understanding’ described by Justice Cooley:
“ ‘A constitution is made for the people and by the people. The interpretation that should be given it is that which reasonable minds, the great mass of the people themselves, would give it. “For as the Constitution does not derive its force from the convention which framed, but from the people who ratified it, the intent to be arrived at is that of the people, *482and it is not to be supposed that they have looked for any dark or abstruse meaning in the words employed, but rather that they have accepted them in- the sense most obvious to the common understanding, and ratified the instrument in the belief that that was the sense designed to be conveyed.” (Cooley’s Const Lim81).’ (Emphasis added.)”
Bearing in mind that the sole purpose of § 6 is that of making the Commission the exclusive apportioner and districter of the legislature every ten years, with reviewing and enforcing supervision— that only — vested in and with this Court, I conclude that “proposed” was put in the text of paragraph 7 for this precise purpose; that of restricting submission to the Court under paragraph 7 of a plan or plans theretofore proposed to the Commission and turned down there, subject only to the inherent power of this Court to act decretally should there be some emergency or other equitably justifying reason for delayed filing of a plan not previously proposed to the Commission. That indeed did occur during the crisis that developed in May of 1964,14 to which I now refer.
As this Court continued its vigil of February 4, 1964 (372 Mich 418-482) through June 22, 1964 (373 Mich 247-262), awaiting release of the mentioned Reynolds v Sims line of cases, and as the Court faced question whether for want of time there might be an interregnal breakdown of the state government for want of a constitutional election in 1964 of Michigan’s Senate and House of Representatives, then and now Commissioner A. Robert Kleiner petitioned the Court “for leave to file a districting and apportionment plan for the Michigan legislature, attached *483hereto and identified as Exhibit 1, as an alternate to the plan submitted to this Court in this matter by Commissioners Austin and Kleiner on February 14, 1964.” The petition was replete with urgent good reason for grant of leave requested, the out- and-out uncertainty of validity — under the Fourteenth Amendment — of portions of §§ 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Michigan’s legislative article considered.
In view of the fact that the petition came in ample time for consideration of the proffered alternate plan by the then Republican half of the constitutional Commissi on, and since the emergent need for paragraph 7 consideration of the alternate plan was made amply clear to us, this Court by unanimous order dated May 13,1964 granted the petition. Thus came into being the alternate plan which, reviewed in conjunction with the rules subsequently laid down in the aforesaid Reynolds v Sims line of cases, was ultimately approved under paragraph 7 as the basis for the Senate and House elections of 1964.

To Conclude:

1. The accusation of “political shenanigans”, made in the quoted second paragraph of the majority opinion, tells volumes. The majority seems to look on a paragraph 7 proceeding, whether it be premature or timely, as a contest between Republicans and Democrats. But when properly instituted such a proceeding brings to Court the exalted test of a people’s superior right, regardless of any and all suqh “shenanigans”, to the careful deliberation by all'Justices of the ten-year destiny of their state’s bicameral legislature. If there ever was a proceeding where political considerations — “shenanigans” and all — should be brushed aside, this is it. Sadly, that is not to be.
2. Respect for that prim reminder which the Supreme Court handed this Court in 1955 (In Re *484Murchison, 349 US 133, 136; 75 S Ct 623; 99 L Ed 942), “A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process”, should have suggested immediately that a mere jot of leaning over backward, by the dedicated Democratic Brethren, was definitely in order so that all appearance of partisanship might be scrupulously avoided. But as matters have turned out the process that was due all persons and parties represented at bar, and more so the process that was due all of the people of all Michigan, has been denied patently by the Court’s judgment of May 4, however artlessly that may have been done.
3. As in the companion UAW case, nothing written above is to be taken as a Republican brief. Some pretty fair reasons were supplied by dissent in the UAW case for concluding that, were the political situation reversed, no one could or would entertain honest doubt that the majority of Republican nominees to the Court “would be just as stubbornly party-inclined as are today’s four Democratic nominees.” 15 Reference to that dissent is respectfully made with observation that each of the two proceedings, coming here concurrently as they have, were filed in our clerk’s office by the same complaining litigant, that is, the Democratic party of Michigan. That party has succeeded signally in both instances, all the way *485through, upon unitary vote of four Democratic nominees to the Court.
I would enter an order advising the constitutional Commission as proposed by the concluding paragraph of my dissent against issuance of the Court’s order of February 9 (Appendix IV, post p 489). As correspondingly recommended for the companion 17AW case I would enter another directing that the Court of Appeals be assigned en banc to Supreme Court duty under amended § 23 of the judicial article, the specific assignment to be that of hearing and determining all proceedings rightfully instituted under paragraphs 7 and 8 of said § 6 and arising out of the now counted decennial census of 1970.

APPENDIX I

(February 1, 1972 memo of Acting Chief Justice Adams to the other Justices)
February 1, 1972 To: The Justices From: Paul L. Adams
Acting Chief Justice

In re: Apportionment Plan for the Michigan Legislature

Edwin P. Hughes, a member of the Commission on Legislative Apportionment, has submitted to this Court an apportionment plan.
The Clerk has not as yet received an official notice from the Commission on Legislative Apportionment that it has been unable to agree upon a plan. However, it is understood that such a statement will be received by the Clerk very shortly.
On February 6, 1964, when we had The Matter of the Reapportionment of the Michigan State Leg*486islature before us, Chief Justice Thomas M. Kavanagh issued an order, copy of which is attached to this memo.
It would appear to me that the first order of business, as soon as the matter is officially before us, would be to issue a similar order setting dates for members of the Commission to petition the Court submitting their plans, submitting objections to any other plans, and fixing a date for members of the Commission, or their attorneys, to make an oral presentation of their plans, or their objections to other plans, to the Court.
As this matter is of some urgency, I would appreciate suggestions from all Justices as to what they think would be a suitable time table, bearing in mind that there will undoubtedly be considerable pressure for the Court to act as speedily as possible.
With a view to affording the Justices as much assistance as possible in absorbing and digesting the several plans which I anticipate will be submitted, I have instructed the Clerk to request Commissioner G-reenia to prepare a Special Report to the Court on such plans as are submitted. Copies of the plan submitted by Edwin P. Hughes are presently on file. The Clerk has one and the other one was left with me. [Here follows the proposed form of order.]

APPENDIX 11

(February 2, 1972 memo of Acting Chief Justice Adams to the other Justices)
February 2, 1972 To: The Justices From: Paul L. Adams
Acting Chief Justice

*487
In re: Apportionment Plan for the Michigan Legislature

Supplementing my memo of yesterday with regard to the above matter, I wish to explain further that the assignment to Commissioner Grreenia to prepare a Special Report is a special assignment for the purpose of having a preliminary report before us when this matter is heard.
Since I would assume that we would be hearing this matter either during our March term or thereabouts, I felt it was desirable that some arrangement be made for a preliminary digest of the material to assist us in going over it.

APPENDIX III

(February 3, 1972 memo of Acting Chief Justice Adams to the other Justices)
February 3, 1972 To: The Justices From: Paul L. Adams
Acting Chief Justice

In re: Apportionment Plan for the Michigan Legislature

The Court has now received notice from the Secretary of State that the Commission on Legislative Apportionment has been unable to agree upon district plans for the State Legislature. Copies of the letter are being circulated by the Clerk to the Justices.
I have discussed time problems with Bernard Apol, Director of the Elections Division. The crucial deadline is June 20,1972, which is the final date for candidates to file petitions for election to legislative office. For a new plan to be in effect on that date, it would have to be published 60 days before June 20, or April 21, 1972. This, of course, is the *488ultimate date and actually publication should occur not later than April 14 or 15. Before publication can occur, this Court must decide upon a plan and “direct it be adopted by the commission and published.” Once a plan is adopted by the Court, it would be necessary to have an interval of at least three days, preferably more, to convene the Commission and allow the Commission time to take steps to have the plan published. This means that if a new plan is to be adopted for the 1972 elections, this Court is faced with a deadline on or about April 10 or 11 to decide upon a plan.
In view of the foregoing, I think it is quite apparent that if we are to proceed with due dispatch with this matter, it is essential that a hearing be scheduled for early March. I have checked with as many of the Justices or their secretaries as I have been able to reach and it appears that the schedules of all of the Justices, as far as I have been able to ascertain, are clear so that this matter can be heard on March 6 at 2:00 p.m. This is the Monday before we will begin to hear cases and should be a convenient time for all of the Justices to convene instead of convening on the following Tuesday morning.
understand that there is a possibility that he may have some objections to the entry of such an order and, of course, there may also be objections by other Justices whom I have been unable to reach. If a majority of the Justices signify their approval of the proposed order, I will enter it at noon on Tues-was entered on February 6,1964 by Justice Thomas
Attached hereto is a proposed order promulgatorder is practically a carbon copy of the one that M. Kavanagh. There is even very little change as to the dates.
After talking with Justice Black this morning, I ing procedures for the hearing on March 6. The *489day, February 8, with whatever dissenting Justices may wish filed at the same time.
If the majority are unable to agree on the proposed order, it, of course, will not be entered and we will have to proceed from there. [Here follows the proposed form of order.]

APPENDIX IV

(Supreme Court order of February 9, 1972, “Promulgating Procedures for Proceedings to be had under the seventh' Paragraph of Section 6, Article IV of the Michigan Constitution of 1963.)
A petition submitting a proposed apportionment and districting plan for the Michigan Legislature having been filed with this Court by Edwin P. Hughes, one of the Commissioners on Legislative Apportionment, under section 6 of Article IV of the Michigan Constitution of 1963, IT IS ORDERED BY THE COURT AS FOLLOWS:
Members of the Commission on Legislative Apportionment are advised that each member individually or jointly with other members may petition the Court on or before February 18, 1972, pursuant to the provisions of the seventh paragraph of section 6, Article IV of the Michigan Constitution of 1963, for its consideration of and action upon a proposed apportionment and districting plan.
Any other member or members of the Commission may file with the Court written objections to any such plan on or before February 25, 1972.
Petitions, objections thereto, and other pleadings or documents, shall be printed, multilithed or mimeographed on paper no larger or smaller than 8-1/2 by 11 inches, 20 copies of each to be filed with the Clerk of the Court, and 2 copies to be served forthwith upon each other member of the Commission, *490proof of such service to be filed promptly with the Clerk.
Members of the Commission desiring to appear before the Court in person or by attorney on March 6, 1972, at 2:00 p.m., for oral presentation of their plan or their objections to other plans submitted to the Court, shall file written demand therefor with the Clerk of the Court on or before February 25, 1972.

 From Mr. Lincoln’s historic “Lost Speech”, delivered May 29, 1856, at the First Republican State. Convention in Illinois. “Life *462and Works of Abraham Lincoln”, Vol 2 “Early Speeches”, pp 279, 280. (Centenary Edition, published 1907 by the Current Literature Publishing Co., New York!.

 The sentence appears in acting Chief Justice Adams’ memo to the Justices dated February 3. See it in entirety, Appendix III, post p 487.

 The quotations appear in the second paragraph of the majority opinion, ante p 450 and again post p 483.

 The quotation appears in that urgent memo of February 1 which acting Chief Justice Adams circulated within minutes after the presently-considered Hughes plan and petition were filed in our clerk’s office. The memo in entirety is annexed as Appendix I, post p 485,

 See outline of Missouri’s method, where the final authority is nonpartisan; 377 Mich 411, 412.

 We have in Michigan five classes of courts that make up our judicial system. They are the District Courts, the Probate Courts, the Circuit Courts, the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is our only partisan-nominated Court. And it is the only partisan-nominated, and nonpartisan-elected Supreme Court in the United States.

 Separate provisions of the Constitution provide that the Senate be elected for four-year terms; the House for two-year terms. The simultaneous elections of the Senate and House in 1964 and again in 1966, those years only, were specially-authorized and directed by § 5 of the constitutional schedule, but that section by its express terms has had no application since 1966.

 This Hughes plan was on its face a hurried-in sham to gain time. On that face it was constitutionally insufficient for want of compliance with the basic requirement of Reynolds v Sims (quoted supra). The fact was confessed on the first page of the petition that accompanied the Hughes plan to this Court:
“I am submitting to the Court, at this time an apportionment plan identified as Senate Plan 19 and House Plan 13, which sacrifices equality of population in order to maintain intaet a greater number of boundaries of political subdivisions within the State of Michigan.”
The Hughes plan was formally withdrawn from judicial consideration by Democratic Commissioner Kleiner during oral argument March 6.

 See the mentioned second paragraph of the majority opinion ante p 450), accusing “both political parties” of “political shenanigans” as the opinion proceeds cozily to award the prize to the Democrats.

 “Circumstances, which are things, constitute inflexible proofs. Witnesses may be mistaken, or careless in their use of words, especially when interested in the judicial result. Circumstances can be neither. They cannot lie, once they are established.” (Schneider v Pomerville, 348 Mich 49, 58 [19571) .

 The concluding paragraph of that dissent reads:
“I would enter an order advising the constitutional commissioners that they should receive and consider all plans they wish the Court to examine according to the paragraph 7 test; further, if unable to agree then, that they should meet for the making of a due and final record of constitutional disagreement. That record with all plans the commission has considered and failed to adopt should then be submitted to this Court as the constitutionally directed basis for paragraph 7 proceedings.” (Appendix IV, post p 489.

 Ponder the complete fifth paragraph of the acting Chief Justice’s February 1 memo (Appendix I) :
“As this matter is of some urgency, I would appreciate suggestions from all Justices as to what they think would be a suitable time table, bearing m mind that there will undoubtedly be considerable pressure for the Court to act as speedily as possible.” (Emphasis supplied.)

 Our majority advises, without looking in the mirror:
“The activities of the political parties during the 1964 Commission on Legislative Apportionment, and the political shenanigans of both political parties making up the Commission this year, as brought out in oral argument before this Court, convinced a majority of the Court that it would be futile to remand this cause to the Commission for further proceedings.” (Majority opinion, ante p 450.)

 For an excellent analysis of the constitutional predicament as it stood at the time, see Justice Souris under date of June 24, 1964 (373 Mich 257-262).

 These twin dissenting opinions inveigh, not against any partisan nominee to the Court, but rather against what has to be the most sordid system of judicial selection that is known anywhere in the United States. Every two years our personnel changes regularly by means of controlled partisan nominations, followed by the pretense of “nonpartisan” elections of two and occasionally one Justice. The situation parallels exactly that which Judge Higbee lamented in the corresponding redistrieting case of State ex rel Lashly v Becker, 290 Mo 560, 235 SW 1017, 1041 (1921):
“Shackled as we are with partisan bias and prejudice, it is humiliating to confess that even judges in our highest courts are unable to divorce law and politics. In emergencies, great and small, they have heard the Macedonian cry, and have not been disobedient to the call.”