Court Opinion

ID: 9737158
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:17:35.692118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:56.858638
License: Public Domain

*231Mr. Justice Campbell
(Mr. Justice Cooley concurring) :
“The cardinal rule of construction, concerning language, is to apply to it that meaning which it would naturally convey to the popular mind, in all cases where the propriety of such construction is not negatived by some settled rule of law. In all instruments which are submitted for confirmation to the people themselves, and which derive all their validity from a popular vote, such a construction is peculiarly necessary; for otherwise they would be defrauded of the right to frame their own government according to their own will.” (People v. Dean [1866], 14 Mich 406, 417, 418.)
Mr. Justice Cooley (quoted in May v. Topping [1909], 65 W Va 656, 660 [64 SE 848, 850]):
“A Constitution is made for the people and by the people. The interpretation that should he given it is that which reasonable minds, the great mass of the people themselves, would give it. ‘For as the Constitution does not derive its force from the convention which framed, but from the people who ratified it, the intent to be arrived at is that of the people, and it is not to be supposed that they have looked for any dark or abstruse meaning in the words employed, hut rather that they have accepted them in the sense most obvious to the common understanding, and ratified the instrument, in the belief that that was the sense designed to be conveyed.’ (Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations [6 ed, 1890], eh 9, p 81).” (Emphasis supplied by present writer.)
By quoted sections 2 and 15 the people have plainly communicated, to the third branch as primary guardian of our Constitution, their desire that the legislature be left free to provide the “jurisdiction, powers and duties” of probate judges. I expect that any A, B, or C student of high school English or *232government (if not all the rest), would experience little difficulty in reaching that conclusion after having been assigned the task of reading, parsing and analyzing sections 2 and 15 to ascertain whether the electors intended to restrict the legislative power as claimed in this case. It is still true, as said in Mapp v. Ohio (1961), 367 US 643, 657 (81 S Ct 1684, 1693, 6 L ed 2d 1081, 1091, 84 ALR2d 933, 944), that “There is no war between the Constitution and common sense.”
The trouble here is not with the words and phrases employed in sections 2 and 15 or, for that matter, in any section of the judicial article. There is no ambiguity in any of these sections, so far as concerns the presented question of constitutionality of the cited statutory provisions. Our difficulty, rather, lies with that fastidious new style of highly “ismy” erudition which accepts nothing as settled and searches busily for ways to confound and complexify the law’s quest for certainty. The once understood and accepted purpose of that quest was to bring about determination of the great bulk of potentially litigable matters upon the then usually dependable advices of eminent counsel; who in turn were entitled to and did rely upon appellate stability when the words and phrases of long since mature statutes and constitutional provisions were brought into scrutiny. It was not to invite more and then, multiplied, more controversies into the courts for multifarious trials and appeals according to new whims and new pressures. Hence it is not wholly true today that lawyers cause litigation; the guilt of appellate judges in that regard has become measurably greater.
This action took a reverse turn after it was instituted and initially decided in the Court of Appeals. Plaintiff’s complaint as filed was designed to obtain a writ of superintending control. The prayer thereof was for temporary restraint of the defendants *233from proceeding with, steps ordered by the governor, pursuant to said sections 201.7-201.10, and for an ultimate mandate requiring the defendants to conclude “the criminal proceedings now pending against the plaintiff before taking further steps directed to the commencement of the taking of testimony in the removal proceedings.” The complaint thus framed, and the attorney general’s answer thereto, went to due submission and resulted in an order, not published in the reports, denying relief as prayed. That order was entered by Division 1 November 18, 1966. November 29, 1966 plaintiff filed a petition for rehearing. January 18, 1967 plaintiff filed a “Supplement to Petition for Rehearing,” raising for the first time the constitutional question considered above. On March 3, 1967 Division 1 filed an opinion it did not publish, which, after preliminary recitals of the procedure taken after the order of November 18 was entered, concluded as follows :
“The provisions of OL 1948, § 201.7, authorizing the governor to direct the attorney general or prosecuting attorney to conduct a hearing’ on the charges alleged as the basis for removal of a county officer before a probate judge or circuit court commissioner is an unlawful imposition of executive functions on judicial officers in contravention of the provisions of the Michigan Constitution of 1963, art 3, § 2.
“This opinion is based on the authority and reasoning of the following cases: In re Slattery (1945), 310 Mich 458, and Local 170, Transport Workers Union of America v. Genesee Circuit Judge (1948), 322 Mich 332, and the exposition of the reasoning approved in those cases as set forth in the opinion of Justice Cardozo in the case of In the matter of Richardson, 247 NY 401 (160 NE 655). See, also, Township of Dearborn v. Dearborn Township Clerk (1952), 334 Mich 673.”
*234This was the extent of treatment accorded by Division 1 to the rehearing-raised constitutional question and such was the posture of the case when the attorney general cross-appealed. The case having been admitted here on grant of leave, plaintiff devoted his original brief exclusively to the questions raised in his original complaint. Thereafter he filed a reply brief consisting only of the following:
“In reply to cross-appellants’ assertion, as set forth under counterstatement of questions involved III, that section 201.7 of the compiled laws of 1948, authorizing the governor to direct the attorney general or prosecuting attorney to conduct a hearing on the charges alleged as the basis for removal of a county officer before a probate judge or circuit court commissioner does not contravene the doctrine of separation of powers as expressed in Const 1963, art 3, § 2, plaintiff-appellant and cross-appellee submits that the case of In Re Richardson, 247 NY 401 (160 NE 655), (Court of Appeals, New York, 1928), should and must impel this Court to reach a contrary conclusion.
“Further, plaintiff-appellant and cross-appellee relies upon the succinct language of the Court of Appeals which is quoted verbatim at pages 22 and 23 of the defendants-appellees and cross-appellants’ brief.”
Since plaintiff relies exclusively on In Re Richardson, 247 NY 401 (160 NE 655), and since Division 1 did likewise in part, it need only be pointed out that no constitutional provision such as we have here, providing that the jurisdiction, powers and duties of the class of judges in question should be provided by law, was cited, involved, or discussed in that case.
To conclude: We may no more maim or truncate the legislative power provided by section 15 of article 6 than clip from the same article the nonjudicial duty (Allor v. Wayne Co. Auditors [1880], 43 Mich *23576, 100, 101; Attorney General v. Loomis [1905], 141 Mich 547, 560; In re Emery [1907], 149 Mich 383, 385) which by section 292 is presently cast npon justices and designated judges. So it really does not matter whether the statutory provisions in question do or do not require probate judges to perform nonjudicial duties. If they do, the legislation thus questioned was plainly authorized by Const 1850, art 6, § 13, then by Const 1908, art 7, § 13, and now is upheld by Const 1963, art 6, § 15. This was and is true since all 3 Constitutions have, in the separation of powers section, made the same express exception.
I vote to reverse and remand for reinstatement of the first order entered below, that of November 18, 1966. No costs should be allowed.
Dethmers, C. J., and Kelly and BreNNAN, JJ., concurred with Black, J.

 “Sec. 29. Justices of the supreme court, judges of the court of appeals, circuit judges and other judges as provided by law shall be conservators of the peace within their respective jurisdictions.”