Court Opinion

ID: 9808186
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:29:52.773106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:46.341078
License: Public Domain

*352Walker, J.,
dissenting: I .agree fully in all that Mr. Justice Gonnor lias said in bis ojnnion. Whether the requirement of the statute that there should be privy examination be wise or expedient is not a question with which this Court has anything to do. We do not belong to the legislative department of the government and have no right to change the statute. We must construe the law as we find it. It has been wisely' provided that there should be three divisions of government — one to make the law, another to expound, and still another to execute it. The people have the right, through their chosen representatives, to say what the law shall be, and this Court has no right or power to say otherwise. When we .attempt to do so we trench on the prerogative of the legislative department. The sooner we clearly understand the relation between the different co-ordinate departments of our State government, the more surely will we confine ours'elves within the defined limits of our jurisdiction as prescribed to us by the people under their Constitution. I am not, of course, opposed to any such change of the married woman’s law as the Legislature may think will accord more nearly with what we may suppose to be the enlightened spirit of the age. I believe that honorable body has proceeded so far cautiously, and that it has had due regard to the delicate relation always subsisting between husband and wife, not wishing to compel by legislation any course of action which may imperil the unity and harmony and the happiness of the home, for “surely in the homes of the people lodge at last the strength and responsibility of this government, the hope and the promise of this republic.”
I must respectfully protest against the suggestion that the law so classified married women, in respect to their right of contracting, as to place them in the same category with idiots, lunatics, persons non compos mentis and convicts, for the purpose of degrading them in the estimation of society, as I well *353know that there was no such intention. It must occur to any one who will consider and apply candidly and fr.anldy the reason of the law by which married women are required to be privily examined that such was not the purpose. It is not because they are insane, idiotic or non compos, nor even because they may be incapable of judiciously managing their own affairs, that the law was enacted. It is perfectly apparent that such is not the reason which actuated the Legislature. It is simply because of the delicate and confidential relation subsisting between husband and wife, and the fact that even a woman with perhaps more sense and wisdom than her husband has — and this is not infrequently the case— will sometimes yield to his wishes, or to his undue persuasion or influence, to prevent family jars or friction and preserve peace in the household. It is the highest tribute the law could -pay to woman-that it recognizes her refined sense of propriety and her unselfish desire to do whatever may promote conjugal felicity and her delicate sensibility in such cases. It is just for this reason that it provides against the abuse of those excellent virtues by a thriftless or perhaps brutal husband. And again, it is to protect the weak and confiding wife, however sound of mind she may be, against the machinations of a designing and mercenary husband. It was never the purpose of the law to rank her, in the scale of intelligence or morality, with weaklings or convicts. I believe that many a good woman, endowed with mental faculties and capacity at least equal to those of her husband, has been saved by this beneficent and wholesome law from destitution and poverty. If we regard privy examination as an idle ceremony, to be performed by the judicial officer in a merely perfunctory manner and without due regard to the real protection of the married woman — a mere form and not a serious procedure, as it is and was designed to be — it will be of little or no avail. But we must assume that officers will discharge *354their duty in the same spirit which prompted the Legislature in imposing it upon them, and in an efficient and not merely a formal way. The law, if I may be permitted to say so, is a wise and salutary one, when properly enforced, and, since the enactment of the recent statute mentioned in the opinion of Justice Connor, the rights of innocent purchasers are sufficiently safeguarded.