Court Opinion

ID: 9694826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:56:16.252596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:05.653899
License: Public Domain

Vanderbilt, C. J.
(dissenting). I join in the dissent of Mr. Justice Hehee, but in addition I cannot subscribe to the view of the majority that a statement attached to a bill by its introducer aids in any way in the determination of the intent of the Legislature with respect to the measure passed. This unreliable form of extrinsic “aid” to the determination of the legislative idea intended by the text of a statute has been slowly finding its way into our judicial expressions, De Vita v. Housing Authority of City of Paterson, 17 N. J. 350, 111 A. 2d 497 (1955); Rogers v. Dept. of Civil Service, 17 N. J. 533, 111 A. 2d 894 (1955); State v. Hotel Bar Foods, 18 N. J. 115, 112 A. 2d 726 (1955); State v. Low, 18 N. J. 179,113 A. 2d 169 (1955); Dacunzo v. Edgye, 33 N. J. Super. 504, 111 A. 2d 88 (App. Div. 1955); In re 301-317 Clinton Avenue, 35 N. J. Super. 136, 113 A. 2d 208 (Cty. Ct. 1955).
Such a statement attached to a bill may perchance—but by no means certainly-—be indicative of the purpose intended by the introducer. Many legislative bills, if not indeed most of them, are not prepared personally by the introducer but by some constituent of his who wishes the bill introduced for reasons of his own. In all of these cases the statement attached to the bill reflects not the introducer’s purpose but at most the intention of the introducer’s constituent. This sponsoring constituent is no disinterested party; he has his own personal motives for getting the bill introduced and passed. He may not be entirely frank in stating these reasons as a legislator would be expected to be in the case of statements made by him personally on bills which he prepared personally. If the real sponsor of a bill knows that his state*587ment is likely to be used in construing the bill after its enactment, the temptation to be artful in his own interest in preparing his statement would in many cases prove irresistible, especially as the sponsor of a bill in most cases remains anonymous. In these circumstances, the bill might clearly say one thing and the statement attached to the bill indicate something quite different.
But the vice of relying on the statement attached to a bill goes further. The statement attached to the bill on its introduction appears only on the bill as it is first printed in the house where it is introduced. On the bill being referred to a committee, the bill as first introduced with the statement attached to it is immediately superseded by an official committee reprint, without the statement appearing, and thereafter the statement never appears in the house where the bill was introduced. For after the bill has passed the house where it is introduced does the statement ever appear on the bill as it finds its way through the other house. And finally, it does not come before the Governor when it is presented to him for his approval. Officially, then, the statement is not before the Legislature when the bill comes up for a vote.
But it is urged that the introducer’s statement is known to all the members of the Legislature in fact, if not officially, but if one has ever seen the Legislature in action at a busy session this would seem to be as untrue in fact as it is officially. When one bears in mind the hundreds of bills which are introduced each year in our Legislature and which are passed upon in a relatively small number of sessions, often under suspension of rules, and (except in the most unusual cases) without any committee reports stating the reasons for and against the passage of a bill, it is fanciful to suggest that these introducing statements reach the hands, not to mention the minds, of all of the members of both houses. The situation is quite different from that which prevails in some legislative bodies, as, e. g.} the Congress of the United States, where detailed committee reports are the normal course of procedure on every bill called up for vote and where there is a *588full stenographic record which is promptly printed the next day in The Congressional Record of all legislative proceedings on the floor of both houses and where committee hearings are also published. Here we not only very seldom have committee reports but we do not have any stenographic record taken of what is said on the floor of each house or copies thereof printed. Our legislative record, aside from the bills and the amendments thereto themselves, is at most a skeletonized account of the proceedings which tells practically nothing concerning the intent of the members of the Legislature except as may be gathered from their votes.
Since these usual sources of legislative intention available in the construction of federal statutes are lacking in the case of state enactments, see Filsop, Legislative Records as Extrinsic Aids in State Courts 6-1 (unpublished summary of 1940 survey conducted for the Legislative Drafting Be-search Eund of Columbia University), all sorts of difficulties can be contemplated if such non-legislative material is accepted as a measure of the meaning intended by the State Legislature of the particular words used when there is absolutely no basis for accepting it as such.
It has long been a rule of law binding English courts that it is not permissible to use legislative statements in ascertaining the meaning of a statute, Holdsworth, Some Makers of English Law (Cambridge University Press) pp. 29L-296; see also 1 Blachstone Comm. 85-92. Belaxation of the rule and the turn to extrinsic aids to construction in this country first came in the form of federal judicial pronouncements that when a statute was ambiguous, committee reports or legislative debates could be examined for what light they might shed on the subject, Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 451, 464-465, 12 S. Ct. 511, 36 L. Ed. 226 (1892); The Delaware, 161 U. S. 459, 412, 16 S. Ct. 516, 40 L. Ed. 771 (1896); (cf. United Slates v. Trans-Missouri Freight Ass’n, 166 U. S. 290, 318, 11 S. Ct. 540, 41 L. Ed. 1007 (1897)); Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470, 495, 24 S. Ct. 349, 48 L. Ed. 525 (1904); Binns v. United States, 194 U. S. 486, 495, 24 S. Ct. 816, 48 L. Ed. 1087 (1904); *589United States v. St. Paul M. & M. Ry. Co., 247 U. S. 310, 316-318, 38 S. Ct. 525, 62 L. Ed. 1130 (1918); Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443, 41 S. Ct. 172, 65 L. Ed. 349 (1921); see also dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Appendix A thereof in Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Estate of Church, 335 U. S. 632, 667, 687-689, 69 S. Ct. 322, 93 L. Ed. 288 (1949); United States v. American Trucking Ass’ns, 310 U. S. 534, 543, 60 S. Ct. 1059, 84 L. Ed. 1345 (1940); United States v. Dickerson, 310 U. S. 554, 562, 60 S. Ct. 1034, 84 L. Ed. 1356 (1940); United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U. S. 110, 125, 62 S. Ct. 523, 86 L. Ed. 726 (1942). This development was not without qualification. In the Wrightwood case, supra, it was held that little, if any, weight could or would be given to statements by members of the Congress not in charge of the legislation in question, the indication being that the less reliable the source the less the reliance that should be placed thereon; compare Securities and Exchange Commission v. Robert Collier & Co., 76 F. 2d 939 (2nd Cir. 1935); and for instances of development in state courts, see Morgan v. Fayette County Bd. of Ed., 294 Ky. 597, 172 S. W. 2d 64 (Ct. App. 1943); Hood Rubber Co. v. Commissioner of Corp. and Taxation, 268 Mass. 355, 167 N. E. 670, 70 A. L. R. 1 (Sup. Jud. Ct. 1929); Third District Land Co. v. Toka, 170 So. 793 (La. Ct. App. 1936); Woollcott v. Shubert, 217 N. Y. 212, 111 N. E. 829, L. R. A. 1916E, 248 (Ct. App. 1916). In Bass v. Allen Home Improvement Co., 8 N. J. 219 (1951), one of the parties attempted to introduce into evidence the testimony of the member of the Legislature who introduced and sponsored the legislation under review. Although his testimony was objected to, he was allowed to give it. On appeal this court did not hesitate to reverse on the ground that the introducer’s testimony was not a proper method of construing a statute. It would seem, however, that the testimony of the introducing legislator would have a higher probative value than his mere statement, because it would be subject to cross-examination which the statement, of course, is not.
*590The danger that attaches to the use of legislative history even when it is founded on elaborate committee reports submitted to Congress before legislative action is taken and even where every word said on the floor of either house is stenographically reported and promptly printed the next day and where the hearings of witnesses taken before Congressional committees are speedily available, has been clearly pointed out by Mr. Justice Eobert H. Jackson:
“I, like other opinion writers, have resorted not infrequently to legislative history as a guide to the meaning of statutes. I am coming to think it is a badly overdone practice, of dubious help to true interpretation and one which poses serious practical problems for a large part of the legal profession. The British Courts, with their long accumulation of experience, consider Parliamentary proceedings too treacherous a ground for interpretation of statutes and refuse to go back of an Act itself to search for unenacted meanings. They thus follow Mr. Justice Holmes’ statement, made, however, before he joined the Supreme Court, that ‘We do not inquire what the legislature meant, we ask only what the statute, means.’
And, after all, should a statute mean to a Court what was in the minds but not put into the words of men behind it, or should it mean what its language reasonably conveys to those who are expected to obey it?
The Constitution evidently intended Congress itself to reduce the conflicting and tentative views of its members to an agreed formula. It was expected to speak its will with considerable formality, after deliberation assured by three readings in each House. Its exact language requires executive approval, or enough support to override a veto. How far, then, should this formal text and context be qualified or amplified by expressions of one or several Congressmen in reports or debates which did not find place in the enactment itself?
There is a tendency to decrease the measure of the ambiguity which originally justified resort to legislative history. But even if the ambiguity is genuine and substantial, do we find more solid ground by going back of it? It is a poor cause that cannot find some plausible support in legislative history, which often includes tentative rather than final views of legislators or leaves misinterpretation unanswered lest more definite statements imperil the chance of passage. * * *” 34 A. B. A. J. 535, 537 (1948)
All of these doubts apply in greatly magnified form when reliance is placed on an introducer’s statement which may or may not have' been drawn by the introducer and which *591may have been drawn by some constituent of his for the purpose of misleading the Legislature and which promptly disappears from view as soon as the bill is introduced and is never officially—and in most cases not actually—seen by the legislators from then on.
Our task is to determine legislative intent as appears from the words of the statute. The difficulty with the view advocated by the majority is that it seeks to obtain that intent and meaning from the source the Legislature did not have in mind.
I would reverse.