Court Opinion

ID: 9699037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:07:45.493008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:45.919041
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
{dissenting). When an appellate court having authority so to do interprets and applies an abstruse statute, the interstices of ambiguity and uncertainty are necessarily filled by the judicial branch. Thus the statute is rewritten in part by the Court, and so judges do legislate in a most definite sense.* †It is necessary that courts do this. Why! Let’s face the answer with candor and without pretense. Is it not that the doubtful and not too thoroughly spelled statute makes no law until the meaning thereof has been fixed!†
*682Back in the 1920’s this Court, manned then by a memorably able crew of industrious judges, interpreted the broadly worded statute before us as requiring that petitions for recall “state facts which, if true, would show nonfeasance, misfeasance or malfeasance in office.” (Newberg v. Donnelly, 235 Mich 531; People, ex rel. Elliot, v. O’Hara, 246 Mich 312.) By force of Newberg and O’Hara the statute reads— today — that way. It has governed, well it would seem since 1926, the legal circumstances under which recall elections have been permitted and conducted. Now it is resolved — in the favorite parlance of a Brother, seated here — that this Court pry at the crevices of this statute by overruling Newberg and O’Hara to permit any fuzzy or petty charge — say wearing orange on St. Patrick’s Day — as an assigned basis for recall of an elective nonjudicial officer. Standing by and on the worthy integrity of the 2 cited cases, I oppose the resolution.
■ There was good reason for the drawing in New-berg and O’Hara of an interpretive line between whimsey and due allegation of legal substance. Without such line and its reason, new elections might constantly be held, and disgruntled minorities might at will so harass elected officials as to cripple if not actually frustrate due functioning by them. And, while it was found unnecessary to say so in O’Hara, I apprehend that the legislature enacted this statute with confidence that our Court — if called upon to-decide — would interpret the statute in such manner as to guarantee elected public officials some minimal semblance of due process as a condition of recall, that' is to say, that we look upon the statute as providing in favor of such officers the right to be charged, before being called upon to defend, with some act which offends the law and not the spleen of a petitioning minority.
*683I see no reason for departure from the wisdom of Newberg and O’Hara, or for adoption of views some other States have taken of variant statutes and constitutional provisions,* and therefore concur with Mr. Justice Kelly’s determination that these petitions are legally insufficient under the statute.
Kavanagh, J., concurred with Black, J.
Souris, J., took no part in the decision of this case.

 “Here, indeed, is the point of contact between the legislator’s work and Ms [that of the judge]. The choice of methods, the appraisement of values, must in the end be guided by like considerations for the one as for the other. Each indeed is legislating within the limits of his competence. No doubt the limits for the judge are narrower. He legislates only between gaps. He fills the open spaces in the law.” Cardozo, Nature of the Judicial Process; Lecture 3,' “The Judge as a Legislator,” pp 113, 114.

 “Were a legislature to try always to tie down the courts by overprecise words, it would often defeat itself. Consequently, the legislature, not infrequently, uses words that are purposely vague, intending that the courts should work out the meaning as specific eases arise.
“Legislative legislation thus often calls for interpretation which compels judicial legislation necessary to carry out the legislature’s purpose. That explains the following statement by Gray to which some lawyers object: ‘It has sometimes been said that the law is composed of 2 parts — legislative law and judge-made law, but in truth all the law is judge-made law. The shape in which a statute is imposed on the community as a guide for conduct is that statute as interpreted by the courts. The courts put life into the dead words of the statute.’ ” Jerome Prank, Courts on Trial (Princeton Univ. Press, 1950), p 294.

 Billed as “the leading case in this country” is Dunham v. Ardery, 43 Okla 619 (143 P 331, LRA 1915B, 232, Ann Cas 1916A, 1148). There it was contended that the officer (mayor) sought to be removed by procedure of a city charter could only be removed in the’ manner provided by certain constitutional provisions. The charter provision was held valid as against .the stated challenge. .1 find no similarity of any Michigan statute or constitutional, provision with the local and constitutional provisions which, in Dunham, the court considered. And I find no evidence abroad that Dunham is regarded as a ruling or memorable case.