Court Opinion

ID: 9811348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:18:10.794038+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:12:53.622192
License: Public Domain

*335Clark, O. J.,
Concurring: It is well settled by our own decisions, and everywhere else, that the Legislature of a State possesses the lawmaking power as absolutely as the people themselves can exercise it if they could .assemble in one place, except where that power is restricted by some provision of the State or Federal Constitution. There is no provision in either that has disabled the Legislature of North Carolina from enacting Revisal, 1041.
Prior to the Constitution of 1868 a married woman by the fact of marriage itself lost not only the jus disponendi but the entire ownership of her personal property, and of her real estate during the life of her husband, and the power to dispose of it by will or any conveyance. The Convention of 1868 modernized our Constitution by putting husband and wife on an equality in this respect, save only the restriction that in the conveyance of her realty the wife must have the written consent of her husband.
Since the Constitution of 1868 the husband cannot convey his “allotted” homestead without the joinder and privy examination of his wife. Const., Art. X, sec. 8; Dalrymple v. Cole, 170 N. C., 102. It would be strange, therefore, if the Legislature could not forbid him to convey his household .and kitchen furniture without the same joinder and privy examination of the wife, for there is no prohibition against such enactment by the General Assembly. The house would be of small use to her without furniture and kitchen utensils.
The same public policy which requires the joinder of the wife in a mortgage by the husband of his household and kitchen furniture, Re-visal, 1041, is also shown in the legislation which requires the joinder of the wife to relieve the husband’s realty from the dower right of the wife, Revisal, 3085. Dower exists only by virtue of the statute of 1868-9, Revisal, 3084, and if the Legislature can require the joinder of the wife in the conveyance of the husband’s realty in order to make a full and perfect conveyance of it, it has authority to impose the same requirement upon a conveyance by the husband of his household and kitchen furniture.
From 1784 up to the act of 1868-9 such dower right did not exist as to lands conveyed by the husband, for the wife was entitled to dower only in the real estate of which the husband “died siezed and possessed.” This was not changed by the Constitution of 1868, but by the act of 1868-9, which required the joinder of the wife in the husband’s conveyance of “all lands, tenements, and hereditaments whereof the husband was seized and possessed at any time during the coverture.” Revisal, 3084, 3085. The General Assembly showed its absolute power over the whole subject by dispensing with the joinder of the wife in certain *336cases, Revisa!, 959. It is simply a matter of public policy which is >’(.'¡-¡•0(1 in the sovereignty of the people to be exercised by their repre-sei.iv.ves in the General Assembly, subject to review, not by the courts, but only by the people themselves in the election of new representatives."
The courts have no control over the public policy of the State, its social" legislation or exercise of the police power. If the courts had any control over such matters, and their views and not those enunciated by the lawmaking powers should govern then, as has been well said, “the .selection of the judges must be frankly based upon the political .and social outlook of candidates for judicial position, and the ultimate sovereignty over the public policy of the State and Union would lay with the judges and not with the people.”
The requirement that the wife must join in the conveyance of the husband’s realty, in the conveyance of his allotted homestead, and in a mortgage of his household and kitchen furniture, and that the husband must give his written assent to the conveyance by the wife of her realty, are all of a piece as a declaration of public policy. Two of these are statutory and can be changed, repealed, or added to> at the will of the Legislature.
The requirement of the privy examination of the wife has come down to us from a distant and barbarous past, and was based upon the conception of the inherent inferiority and incompetence of the woman, the presumption that the husband would bully her and that she could be bullied by him. Originally such examination was in court, but became useless when made by a magistrate selected by the husband. It must be admitted that there was some ground for this examination as long as we continued to hold that a husband had the right to whip his wife “if he did not use a switch larger than his thumb.” But this doctrine was repudiated here in 1874, in S. v. Oliver, 70 N. C., 61, and probably before that everywhere else, and hence the privy examination has long since been abolished in England, in all our adjoining States — Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and West Virginia — and, indeed in all the States of the Union except North Carolina and four others. However antiquated and unnecessary the privy examination has now become, it cannot be questioned that the General Assembly can require it as to all conveyances made by the husband in which the wife is required to join. It is otherwise as to conveyances by the wife of her realty, as to which the Constitution has guaranteed that the property of the wife shall remain hers as fully as if she were unmarried, and that she may convey it, requiring only “the written assent of the husband.” The addition of the privy examination, therefore, in conveyances by her is contrary to this stipulation in the Constitution.
*337Revisal, 1041, applies only to conveyances by tbe husband of the household and kitchen furniture, and the requirement of the privy examination of the wife in giving her assent thereto is within the power of the General Assembly and is in line with the same requirement in the Constitution as to the joinder of the wife in the conveyance of the allotted homestead — the only instance in which the Constitution recognizes such requirement.