Court Opinion

ID: 9811840
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:30:36.00607+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:53.555048
License: Public Domain

Avery, J.
(concurring): The power to fill by appointment all vacancies occurring in the offices provided for by the Article devoted to the Judicial Department was conferred upon the Governor of the State, both by Section 31 *575of Article IY of the Constitution of 1868, and by that section as amended by the Constitutional Convention of 1875 (Const., Art. IY, Sec. 25) unless otherwise jprovicled for. The provisions added to the original section were manifestly made, in view of the decision of this Court in Cloud v. Wilson, 72 N. C., 155, and were intended to limit the tenure of the appointees of the Chief Executive, whether to fill a vacancy caused by the death or resignation of an incumbent, or by the refusal of a person elected to qualify, to the time intervening between the making of the appointment and the next regular election for members of the G-eneral Assembly, together with a reasonable interval for qualification.
The Constitution as amended in 1875 added to the list of tribunals, to which the Judicial power of the State was delegated, in addition to Superior Courts and Courts of Justices of the Peace, “such other Courts inferior to the Supreme Court as might (may) be established by law.” After giving to the Legislature; in Section 12, Art. IY, the power to allot and distribute the jurisdiction not pertaining to the Supreme Court amongst the Courts established or which might be established by law, the Convention of 1875 made a specific provision for filling the office of Judge of any new tribunal which might be created by the Legislature in pursuance of Section 30, Art. IY,- upon the construction of which.this controversy mainly depends, and which is as follows:
“In case the General Assembly shall establish other Courts inferior to the Supreme Court, the presiding officers and clerks thereof shall'be elected in such manner as the General Assembly may from time to time prescribe, and they shall hold their offices for a term not exceeding eight years.”
The office of Judge of “the Criminal Court of Buncombe, *576Madison, Henderson and Haywood Counties” is tlie subject matter of this controversy, and was created by a statute (Laws 1895, Oh. 75) ratified February 23, 1895. It is provided in section 7 of the Act that an election shall be held for the first full term of four years at the next general election, and that vacancies in the office shall be filled by the Governor, subject to the condition however “that the General Assembly now in session shall elect a person to fill the vacancy in said office, which shall be caused by the ratification of this Act,” and that “said person shall hold his office until his successor shall be elected by the qualified voters of said counties of Buncombe, Madison, Haywood arid Henderson at the next general election, and the person so elected shall hold his term of office as provided in section 6” (for a term of four years).
On the 27th of February, 1895, the General Assembly proceeded to elect a person to fill the office till the next general election, and the relator Ewart received the requisite majority of both houses. The Governor subsequently sent the name of the defendant Jones to the Senate for confirmation, and on failure of that body to act on bis recommendation, issued a commission to the defendant and by virtue of this appointment he is the present incumbent.
The right of the Governor to exercise the power of appointment conferred by Section 25, Art. IY, is contingent upon the occurrence of a vacancy and the absence of any other express provision for filling it. Conceding that a vacancy occurred immediately on the ratification of the Act, on February 23, and existed at least till February the 27th, the controversy is narrowed down to the point whether the General Assembly was vested with authority to provide by the Act that such vacancy should be filled by the subsequent election during the same session. The warrant of authority for electing the relator is to be found, as *577bis counsel contend, in the provision of Section 30, Art. IY, of the Constitution, that the “presiding officer and clerk shall be elected in such manner as the General Assembly may from time to time prescribe.” The Constitutional amendments, made in 1875, were ratified by the people in 1876 and took effect in accordance with the ordinance of the Convention on the 1st day of January, 1877. Ón the 10th day of the following March, a Criminal Court for Wake County was created by statute, and it was provided in sections 6, 9 and 11 the Act (Laws 1876-’77, Ch. 271) that the Judge, Solicitor and Clerk should be elected by the General Assembly.
In the case of Bunting v. Gales, 77 N. C., 283, brought by the Clerk of the Superior Court to test the right of the clerk of the new Criminal Court, elected by the Legislature, to take from the plaintiff the emoluments enuring to the former from the criminal business theretofore cognizable exclusively in the Superior Court, it was held that the act establishing the tribunal was constitutional and that the plaintiff accepted his office in contemplation of the legislative authority, under Section 19, Art. IY, of the Constitution of 1868, authorizing the creation of special courts, to diminish its emoluments as an incident to the transfer of the criminal business to any other court, which it had the power to create. The Court said: “ He (Bunting) took his office therefore with a knowledge that the Legislature might establish a Criminal Court substantially the same with that which they did establish by the Act of i 876-’77, Oh. 271, under the amended Constitution and of which they made the defendant Clerk.” The authority of the Legislature of 1876-’77 to elect a clerk was derived, if it existed, from Section 30, Art. IY, of the amended Constitution, and could not be sustained without holding by an unavoidable implication that the “ presiding officer,” whose office *578is coupled with that of clerk in that section, could likewise be rightfully chosen by the same body. While the question was not discussed, yet in order to reach the conclusion announced the Court must have been of opinion, not only that the Legislature had the power to create the Court, but to elect the clerk whose rights to the fees was sustained. If the Legislature of 1876-’77 had the power to elect a clerk, how can it be contended that, in coupling “ the presiding officers and clerks,” the same authority was not conferred as to the Judge both of that Cohft and of the Criminal Circuit created by the act of 1895 ?
It is insisted that the power of appointment is vested in the Governor by Section 10, Art. 3, of the Constitution, which empowers him to “ nominate and by and with the advice of the Senate to appoint all officers whose offices are established by this Constitution and whose appointments are not otherwise provided for.” The Section (Battle’s Rev., p. 42, Sec. 10, Art. IV, Const., 1868) for which this was substituted by the Convention of 1875, contained, in addition to what is preserved in the present section, the inhibi-itory provision that “ no such officer shall be appointed or elected by the General Assembly.” It was in construing the section, as it then stood and when there was no conflicting provision elsewhere in the instrument, that it was held in People ex rel Welker v. Bledsoe, 68 N. C., 457; Nichols v. McKee, Ibid, 429, and Battle v. McIver, Ibid, 467, that the Legislature was not only not empowered but was •expressly prohibited from appointing trustees of the University and the other officers, the validity of whose elections was the question involved in those controversies. Section 13, Article IN, of the Constitution of 1868 was subsequently amended so as to give to the General Assembly power to provide for the election of trustees of the University of North Carolina.” After this alteration in the *579organic laAV, an Act (LaAvs 1873-’74, Ch. 64) Avas passed empowering both houses of the General Assembly by joint ballot to elect sixty-four trustees of the University, and under its provisions the Legislature proceeded to elect. In Trustees v. McIver, 72 N. C., 76, Justice Byttum, in an able opinion delivered for the Court, and Chief Justice PeaRSON in a concurring opinion, reached the conclusion, in spite of the prohibitory clause which then remained as a part of Section 10, Art. Ill, that the amendment of 1873 did provide, within the meaning of the Constitution, another mode of selecting trustees than by appointment by the Governor and that the act of the Legislature, in pursuance of which the trustees were elected, Avas constitutional.
If the grant of power to the Legislature to provide for electing trustees Avas propeidy held to authorize the election by the General Assembly subject to the same qualification (“ unless otheiuvise provided for ”) Avhich is found in Art. IY, Sec. 25, and despite an additional prohibition against legislative appointment,• it would seem unreasonable to allow the same qualification to restrict the delegation of authority, to elect judges, in language equally as clear. The subtle distinction, Avhich counsel contend may be fairly draAvn betAveen the grant of the poAver to provide for the election of an officer and the authority to prescribe the manner of electing him, does not seem to exist, or is entirely immaterial for the purposes of this discussion. The analogy between the cases of Trustees v. McIver and that at bar is obvious and striking.. It must be noted that all of the cases cited from our own reports to sustain the right of the defendant Avere opinions in support of the executive power of appointment, Avlien the express grant was made to the Governor, and there was no conflicting constitutional provision to bring the qualification into operation.
*580It is conceded tbat the Constitution of 1868 vested the general power of appointment to fill vacancies occurring both in judicial and executive offices in the Governor, subject only to any express provisions in the organic law itself for filling them otherwise, and the authority of the Legislature has been extended from time to time since that Constitution was framed, by express delegation of authority as to some of both classes of officers and by removing the express restriction in Article III. But before an}' such express power was given or limited to the Chief Executive, when by the Constitution as amended in 1835 no express grant of authority to appoint or elect was conferred upon either of the co-ordinate departments, the residuary power of the people to provide for filling offices, already existing, and to create others, was exercised by their representatives in the General Assembty. As an instance of this hind it seems that the General Assembly at its session of 1866-’67, passed an act (Ch. 27) providing for the establishment of a criminal court for the City of Newberne and for the election by the two Houses of a presiding Judge and that in pursuance of the act Judge Green was duly elected, and it is a part of the judicial history of the State that the authority of the Court was recognized by this Court as a part of our judicial system.
By our silence, we must not be understood as conceding the soundness of the legal proposition of counsel that section 37, Article I, of the Constitution was intended as a restriction upon the power of the General Assembly, as the direct representatives of the people. Another construction of the same clause is based upon the idea that the representatives of the people are vested with a delegated authority restricted only to the extent, of the express grants in the State Constitution to the other co-ordinate departments and by the authority delegated to the Federal Government. *581Under that interpretation “all power not delegated” in the Constitution “remains in the people” to be exercised through their representatives and is not to be considered as in abeyance, so that they cannot be exercised, however urgent the necessity for their exercise for the public benefit, except when the people assemble by their delegates in Convention. I do not decide this interesting question, because it is not essential that we should do so, but we present both sides of it to exclude a conclusion that might be drawn from a failure to notice the contention of counsel.
The foregoing opinion was submitted tentatively only as an embodiment of my own views before that of the Court was prepared. It encountered objection on the part of my brethren upon the ground that it conceded the existence of a vacancy between the time when the Act took effect and the election of the relator. It was intended only to admit, for the sake of the argument, that when the Legislature provided for filling “the vacancy in said office, which shall be caused by the ratification of this Act,” the construction which they plainly put upon the .Constitution might by possibility have been correct, but not that it was an interpretation adopted by the Court. It is entirely unnecessary, in the decision of the points involved in this case, to determine whether a vacancy, within the meaning of Article IY, Sec. 25, for which the Governor can in any event designate the first incumbent, occurred on .the ratification of the Act, since every member of the Court eoncursdn the vieur that the Legislature in the exercise of the power granted by Article IY, Sec. 30, had provided otherwise. I deeply regret that the majority of the Court deem it proper to define “a vacancy” when without raising that question we might have had the advantage of entire unanimity in *582our opinion, with such additional weight as the fact is generally considered as giving to the deliverances of appellate Courts. I shall not enter upon the discussion of the soundness of the doctrine that an office can be created and remain unfilled without causing a vacancy. When that question shall be fairly presented, I shall take occasion to give at length my reasons for dissenting from the views of the majority of the Court. Meantime, I venture to express my regret that such a barrier to united action has been, as it seems to me, unnecessarily interposed. Concurring in the conclusion of the Court, I dissent from the proposition that there was no vacancy between the ratification of the act and the election of the relator.