Court Opinion

ID: 9751965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:22:31.588985+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:02.374858
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I wholeheartedly and without reservation join in the excellent Opinion written by Chief Justice Bell. I would add merely the following observation. Section 3-500 of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter states that “An election to fill a vacancy for an unexpired term in the office of Mayor shall be held at the next municipal or general election,” but it does not specify which it shall be — municipal or general. If I were on a strange road and came to a sign reading: New York or Miami, I would ignore it completely and ask the first farmer, traveler or idler who happened along for something more specific.
Section 3-500 leaves the most essential feature of the election directions dangling in the air of ambiguity and swimming in the murky waters of tautology. Should the special election be held at the municipal or the general election? The Charter does not state. Who is to decide whether the election shall be the municipal or the general? The Charter does not state.
An ambiguous statute or ordinance is a dangerous thing. It is like a doctor’s prescription which is half *314blurred, and, if an attempt is made to carry out its obscure directions, the haphazard cure may produce more havoc than the original illness. All the eminent counsel who argued the matter before us (with the notable exception of Judge McBride) assumed that the Charter meant to say that the vacancy would be filled at the next election, municipal or general, whichever came first after the vacancy occurred, but the Charter does not say that.
Where popular elections are involved (the most sacred demonstration of democracy), nothing should be left to conjecture, speculation, guess or assumption. Section 3-500 is utterly vague. It is even a waif of unknown parenthood, and has given evidence of such lack of promise (although stoutly defended) that no one has stepped forward to take credit for its authorship. The eminent and distinguished veteran at the bar, Wm. A. Schnader, president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and who was chairman of the drafting committee of the Charter, has stated that there is no explanation known to him for the inclusion of the words “general election.”*
We are a nation of laws and not of men. Therefore, laws must be specific, if we are to avoid chaos. If the Charter had stated that the vacancy would be filled at the next election, municipal or general, whichever came first after the vacancy occurred, the ambiguity would be removed but the infirmity would still remain. The provision would still be ineffective because, as devastatingly established by the opinion of Chief Justice Bell, this provision runs headlongingly into the stone wall of the Enabling Act, to say nothing of the macerating effects of the applicable machinery of the Constitution.
*315But, aside from all that, I would have declared Section 3-500 (where it applies to the question here involved) void and ineffective because of indecision and lack of clarity. It is like a twisted lamppost devoid of globe and fuel, so that it is neither illuminating nor ornamental. It is, to vary the figure, an unsightly eruption on the otherwise healthy body of the Charter.
The cleansing effect of the majority opinion has caused the blemish to disappear and the charter returns to its pristine state of salubrity. I, therefore, repeat that I wholeheartedly join in the decision of the majority that the election to fill the “vacancy for an unexpired term” in the office of Mayor is not to be filled in 1962. Since 1963 is the year for the election for a full term, the question raised in this appeal, has, as I view it, been settled not only for 1962 but for 1963 as well.

 Cited as a footnote by Attorney Jerome J. Shestaek in his excellent brief in behalf of appellee. Page 24.